problems with CJ's Premier 140 ? anyone

Absolutely zero problems. I've been using a Premier 140 since November of 2003. Every day it proves reliable and sounds great. The 140 is more neutral, faster, and refined than the Premier 12s that it succeeded, yet it remains unmistakenly a CJ. In contrast, it is not as slow, warm, or blurry as the Premier 8 or 12 - those still being great amps. The 140 represents a wonderful combination of control, finesse, and mid-to-lower bottom-end authority.

For the past decade CJ had a 70 watt amp and a 120-140 watt amp or monos in their Premier lineup. There was no comparable smaller amp to the 140. I think they wanted to get back in sync and went ahead with the LP70S and LP140M gear. Same push-pull architecture they've been using for a long while, but as Fjn04 notes, with Teflon caps - those do add to the price. And I also agree with him that your choice should consider your systems preamp and speakers. That said, a used 140 should hold its value quite well.

And fwiw, it may be discontinued, but today it is still listed among current models on the CJ web site. Can you please post a link to the "numerous post" you mention?

Good luck with your amplifier search.

hi Jtimothya,

tks for the reply.

Here is the link to the AA about the CJ140.

http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/t.mpl?f=amp&m=87422

http://db.audioasylum.com/cgi/t.mpl?f=amp&m=45637

I love its sound, no doubt! its great with Proacs, Sonus Fabers and even dynaudios. Am bent on buying one if I can resolve the reliability issues.

Anyone here with CJ140s who can share ??

thanks for inputs.

As I see it the quality of the tubes and to what extent they were tested--i.e. don't buy private seller tubes and rely on home tube testers results.

Both posters in the referenced threads are overseas from US one in Ireland, one in Philippines , so likely 240v which means some different parts from NA - don't know if that makes a difference. Lew Johnson responding to the one fellow seems significant. CJ does sell alot of amps - anyone who does will have some problem cases. Of course asking around as you're doing cannot hurt.

I see eight 140 owners in AA Inmate Systems. Perhaps you could e-mail some of them for their experience? People whose gear works fine tend not to post msgs. to that effect, so you may not find threads that will prove a negative, ie. not unreliable. Is the used 140 still under warranty? Maybe the seller can share the serial # and you can check with CJ if it was every under repair. Cheers!

I have had my premier 8´s for three years with no problems, just a full retubing a year ago for 6550 svets!!!

I agree with FJN04 description of the Premier 8 sound, I mitigate that a lot with a fast Q speaker (Avalon) and ultra-fast cables (SIltech), there is bass articulation an tone in spades!

Fernando