Class A amplifiers

@bigkidz

agree

dick brown’s amps are still among the best... and they have withstood the test of time

I have a glorious Class A Sugden A21SE and it never misses a beat, I contacted Sugden and asked them about having it serviced and he said it’s likely not to need looking at. 
In my opinion class A can’t be bettered. 

As others have mentioned, it depends.

All Class A run warm. Many run hot. Some run so hot that they dry out the electrolytic capacitors.

Solution: don't run them hot, use electrolytic caps only in the power supply, and isolate those caps from the heat sinks. Personally, I run the amplifiers' heat sinks at comfortably warm and the power supply at room temperature in a separate rack in another room. That's a bit extreme - but not as extreme as George!

Went to buy a tube amp and wound up buying an esoteric class a.  Loads of heat and have heard horror stories about having to send it to Japan for service 

The amount of maintenance is overstated for sure but a lot of them do run hot and there can be problems with them due to over heating but a good class a amp can sound great.