Bob Carver tube amps

Mr. Bob carver made some okay stuff and made some decent audio equipment. I remember the little m-400 power amp. Very clean and efficient that little square box push my jbl 4345 Very nicely. I sold it some years later but wish I kept it. Never own any carver tubes equipment but I damn sure heard them performed. Very sweet and musical. I’ve own stuff from fisher tube equipment parasound audio research mcintosh threshold nakamichi. The point I’m trying to make is not all audio gear is pleasing to all. Pick what sounds good to you and jammed on

I am a Carver fan. I have owned his Crimson 350 tube amps for four years. They are remarkable because they have the finesse to sound great very sensitive speakers like my Klipsch Cornwall IIIs, but yet have plenty of power to get the most from my lower sensitivity Ohm 4900s. I believe that they sound better than the vintage and modern McIntosh amps I own.

Carver vintage gear, when brought back to spec, challenges the performance of modern products at many multiples of the Carver vintage prices. Some of my favorite vintage Carver gear is his C-1 preamp, the C-4000 preamp (they are stone silent with many great features including MC/MM; take or leave the Sonic Holography), and the M-400a Cube Amp.

Bob is an easy target for ridicule. He is an outspoken marketing genius who turns off many purists. Most of those purists haven’t spent much or any time with his gear. Too bad for them - it’s their loss.

My only regret about Carver gear is that I didn’t buy the Silver Seven amp when I had the chance. Seven hundred tube watts per channel is just enough!

bob carver has been around forever, he has had ’many lives’ in the industry over the years, so to speak -- always iconoclastic, brash, against the grain in many of his hifi audio endeavors... i too have been a fan of his gear at certain times (still have his lightstar reference linestage -- it is simply brilliant), but at others, i have to shake my head

this recent wave of amplifiers are interesting and controversial, to say the least, the claims made in marketing and selling these lightweight units do stretch the belief systems of many an experienced hobbyist to be sure

Besides the extremely questionable power ratings, what I find most disingenuous about the previous Carver co. was its bold proclamations for a "lifetime warranty" and "20 year tube warranty" (or whatever it was, exactly) when the average lifespan of a Carver co. incarnation seems to be 10 years or less. Good luck getting those claims fulfilled in the future. 

"Lifetime warranty" refers as much to the lifespan of the company as it does the end user....