Bob Carver tube amps

I too have read all the negative press about the recent Carver offerings. If that’s all I had to go on, I’d probably shy away also.

But my experience with the Crimson 275 says something different. A few years ago I bought a pair of Spatial Audio X3s. The amp I had at the time was a Decware Torii II. As much as I loved that amp, and I did love it, it would not drive the X3s sufficiently. Enter the 275. It did a wonderful job driving those speakers effortlessly. I had zero complaints with the performance of that amp.

Speakers and amp are long gone, but I wanted to share  what I heard. I would constantly shake my head at how that tiny little light fly weight amp could sound as good as it did.

I just read two recent reviews in Audio Science review..it was horrible with two amps.. he even found a loose screw in the box

And worse. They documented that the actual power output of the 275 was a small fraction of the published "spec."

As for the OP's choices, he might consider a Pass power amp and a tube preamp.

@silverfoxvtx1800 -- an additional note -- you didn't say which Carver amp you were looking at, nor what your budget or power needs are. However, this summper I bought an LSA VT-70 for $1,300 and it is an excellent amp.  EL34 output tubes and 35 watts per channel. You say you have Klipsch speakers (but didn't indicate which model) but I suspect the VT-70 might be more than enough for your needs. I've posted a short review elsewhere in the amps-preamps section of this forum.  I think LSA is out of stock for this item right now but expecting another shipment here in the near future.

Obviously, disregard my post if you are headed in a different direction.

Never heard or sold one of his tube amps. Did sell his early PL 400 and PL 700 amps. They were capable of playing very LOUDly, but most of them failed for various reasons. Typically, the owner would crank them up "all of a sudden" and that would cause them to fail. Other times, the source would send a "spike" (not a technical term!) to the amp and whatever protection circuits it had would not function correctly and it would fail. My customers loved them when they worked, but much like Crown amps back in the day (solid state ones), they tended to fail rather regularly.

I heard that some live bands used the PL 700’s on stage, but I don’t personally know of any. I would have cautioned them to have some in reserve...

Cheers!