Bob Carver tube amps

I saw some recommendations for Line Magnetic amps here. I don't know how the customer support in the United States is, but my customer journey with the Line Magnetic LM-503PA Mono Vacuum Tube Amps in Vienna is terrible.

Spoiler: Would I recommend buying a Line Magnetic product? Not when you are in Germany or Austria.

In the Summer of 2021, I spent 10k on a pair of Line Magnetic LM-503PA mono vacuum tube amps. This was by far my worst decision in 40 years of buying hi-fi gear.

So far, I have enjoyed listening with the amps for 11 months. But for 5 months, I couldn't enjoy listening with the amps because of defects and ridiculous customer support. As I'm writing this, my Line Magnetic LM-503PA is defective at the distributor for repair for more than four weeks, and Line Magnetic has not even sent the missing spare parts from China to Germany yet. But this is just the tip of the iceberg of my terrible customer experience with a Line Magnetic product.

This is why I wrote a customer report about my journey with the Line Magnetic LM-503PA mono vacuum tube amp. The report is about many customer-unfriendly emails, a dealer who doesn't answers emails at all, the European Line Magnetic distributor holding my amp hostage, and Line Magnetic in China refusing to answer my questions.

https://www.pure-neo.io/writing/my-terrible-customer-journey-with-the-line-magnetic-lm-503pa-mono-vacuum-tube-amps

Carver gear, from vintage to current, is all I have ever purchased for audio.

Nelion, Hitech, (Greg and Roland) bring these great pieces back to spec and even a few “upgrades”.  But that is my decision to buy and have refurbished (mostly) before even plugging in most of them.

Tube amps are simple things.  Any competent repair shop will be able to “fix” any problems any newer tube amp might have in 20-30 or 40 years from now (if tubes are still being made by then(?))

But I have had even non-serviced 40 year old Carver equipment playing music and they sound great.  So getting “service” on 30-40 year old, 2d-3rd or 4th hand, equipment isn’t that difficult.

Not sure why there are so many trashing them.. If it sounds good to you, it sounds good to the only person that matters.

Jim Clark has been very responsive and helpful even for information on “older” Carver Silver Seven.  Probably going to get the RAM285.

Have an A760x from Greg at Nelion driving a pair of Tekton Double Impact SE right now, 100 db is what I am getting clean (measured with Pile meter) before I hear distortion..  Since I ordered them as bi-amp, I can use the RAM on uppers and the A760x for lower (have a couple of Tekton 2-10 subs ordered also)

the DIs do seem to like it better when I limit lower end to them to above ~40hz.

But I might just be hitting power limit.. Lights do dim a bit at times…

Balance of systems.. Nice, loud, great sounding music that doesn’t cost as much as a house…

Not sure why there are so many trashing them..

Nobody feels "good" when their $30K amp gets run over by a $3K amp. Bob’s tracking downconverter is patented and unique to Carver. While his amps have "get up and go" to provide unlimited headroom other $$$ amps just "get up and and blow up" if they even come close to pushing that type of power. The customer that dropped kilobucks on what is essentially a bunch of watts being converted to heat is not pleased:

I had a Sunfire Signature 600 II, and remember it distinctly as the worst sounding 2ch amp I’ve ever owned in 20 years. It got used for like a week before I couldn’t stand it anymore and put back in the PS Audio HCA-2 (also very efficient, certainly no heat converter), to great relief. Then acquired a Parasound A21 - even better. Nowadays I own mega-buck amps, to great satisfaction. But if people are happy with these Carver/Sunfire amps and feel they are superior to $30K (or more) amps, I say good! More power to them! It didn’t work for me.

Ha, ha, "Tracking Downconvertor™". Carver has always been clever at designing an unusual circuit, and then giving it a comic book sounding name, such as Magnetic Field Coil or "autocorrelator". (Who wouldn't want that?)

My favorite is "asymmetrical charge-coupled detector."

What's yours?