A little birdie told me that the amps subject of ASR’s testing were, in fact, $600 kit amps--differing in quality from actual units sold with serial numbers.
@jbhiller Do you have any evidence to support this claim?
I’ve been in the industry for about 47 years. @mulveling has an excellent point, one which I’ve also found troubling. I’m a big fan of the Harmon Kardon Citation 2 which is a stereo 60W/channel amplifier. It weighs about 3 times more. But its made of the same materials. We make a 60 watt monoblock amp that lacks the weight of an output transformer and it weighs about 25 pounds while employing an aluminum chassis.
IMO something doesn’t add up. Put plainly, prior to the Carver amp, no stereo or monoblock tube amps capable of 75 watts that weighed so little were ever made! Since this spec comes from the Carver website: https://www.bobcarvercorp.com/copy-of-crimson-raven-features-spec
I’m inclined to think one of two things. (Using Occam’s Razor...); one explanation is that the weight is a typo. The other explanation, the weight is correct, requires too many other things (some quite wild) such that the answer is for too complex to be correct.
The problem here is that a 19 pound amp would also very coincidentally be about the same weight as a tube amp capable of about 17 watts per channel. I don’t like it when coincidences like that pop up- it makes me think something is fishy.
You are in a position to shed some light on this, and apparently possess the required skills to do what needs to be done, as evidenced by the work you talked about prior on this thread.
I’ve become quite curious and am holding all explanations in abeyance. Could you weigh your amplifier and relay to us that value? Could you remove the output transformer cover and show us what the output transformer looks like? If the ASR review is not of the same amp they are doing a disservice IMO.