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Bob Carver tube amps

Hello, looking for Carver amp info the read out there is a little sketchy. Is that place still in business? And who is actually making the amps? Do the have a factory in the Pacific Northwest….I live in the Pacific Northwest so I could drive there if I had a problem.

I need a tube amp for my Klipsch speakers, you tube heads out there is this the brand I should buy or is there a better option?

I can still remember in the 70s when my father in law went to the factory and grabbed me a Phase Linear amp and preamp off the factory floor..I had more problems with that thing, once and a while it made a super load pop when you turned it on..

 

 

 

silverfoxvtx1800
kota1
2,706 posts
 

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:

 

mulveling's avatar
mulveling
1,930 posts
 

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.

Ag insider logo xs@2x
cleeds
5,973 posts
 

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?

 

kota1
2,706 posts
 

@cleeds 

Too many to count:

https://www.bobcarvercorp.com/patents

kota1
2,706 posts
 

The Sunfire 7401 7 channels x 400 watts each= 2800 watts

Price=$4450/2800 watts= $1.58 per watt

Then you have to factor in the cost savings on your energy bill because it doesn’t need to pull and store constant power, it pulls as needed.

Take your favorite amp and run the numbers, is there any other 400 watt a channel amp available at $1.58 a watt? What about a 300 watt/channel? 200w? 100W???

 

Parasound A21 300w a channel x2=600 watts

Price= $3000/600w= $5 a watt, if it sounds better it should at more than 300% the cost!!

 

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