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Hall of Fame: BIGGEST BADDEST Monster Amps

There have been a lot of posts on:

"tube amps with balls"
"amps to drive my 1 ohm, inefficient speakers"
"amps for rock and roll"
"Levinson, Krell, Bryston, Pass Labs etc"
"sounds more powerful than its rating suggests"
"despite low rating, puts out huge current" etc.

But I somehow find these threads divergent and confusing and still cant seem to short list a new set of monoblocks to biamp (low end) and COMMAND my Magneplanar Tympanis, fill up a large room with EFFORTLESS dynamics and CONTROL the bass with no debates, questions, reservations or tweaky failures.

So let's please hear your thoughts:

What are the all time, hall of fame, MONSTER power amps, where there should be no doubt whatsover about HUGE amounts, of effortlessly dynamic, clean, smooth, audiophile power.

I have to think that for the low end of biamping, this should be a solid state amp, unless someone can really suggest an unusually robust and low maintenance tube amp.

Mark Levinson 20.6?
Pass X-600's?
Bryston 7 B monoblocks?
Parasound monoblocks?

Thank you.
cwlondon
zargon's avatar
zargon
453 posts
 
In 1970, in Edmonds, Washington, Bob Carver launched the Phase Linear 700 power amplifier. The hum and noise figures were better than 100 dB below the 350 watt per channel output. For short bursts into low impedance loads, this amp could approach 2K watts!

It came out when rock music was the rave, when low sensitivity speakers like the B&W 70 and AR LST were popular, and when you could get high voltage transistors at a reasonable price. It was a breakthrough amp providing super power at low cost ($599).

This is a must for the Hall of Fame.
sogood51
2,157 posts
 
Why not pick up a Levinson to match the one you have? The old Krell Ksa-300's have (I think) 5kva transformer so it fits the hall of fame as a stereo amp.

The Krell mono MDA-500's must also be up there in the mix I'd guess...ie, two 4.5 kva transformers.

You do have dedicated 20A circuts don't you?

Dave
robdoorack
63 posts
 
How about Great American Sound's Godzilla mono power amp? It put out over a kilowatt into a 2 ohm load. I saw one at a hi fi show in the late '70s and my memory is that the Godzilla needed a 220v AC line, like a big window air conditioner. Unfortunately GAS only made a couple of dozen of them and most went to members of the Grateful Dead who used Godzillas in their backline. Bob Weir used something like 4 of them on stage.
atmasphere's avatar
atmasphere
11,837 posts
 
You asked for it...

http://www.atma-sphere.com/products/ma3.html
cwlondon OP
1,210 posts
 
Can anyone comment more specifically on the Levinson 20.6 amps?

Or the Pass 600's?

Any other famous monsters?
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