New Adcom GFA-555 se - Special Edition

The orig. 555 II sold a lot of copies, and was a good value for the dollar. having said that, it would still just about tear your ears off with its harsh high frequency response.

I have worked on a number of the 555 II. They can be made to sound pretty good, but takes considerable work and a lot of parts........As others have mentioned, there are a number of SS amps of equiv. power that have much better long term listening characteristics.

Like a lot of people, I owned one of these for years and they were a great buy used but there is so much better equipment on the market for the same price now.

My personal experience with Adcom has been really bad.
I purchased a Adcom 5300 in 2001-2 to power some Martin Logans Aerius i. The amp was always used at low to moderate levels (8 to 10 max on the preamp volume knob).
The amp was getting so hot, you could barely put your hand on the top cover. I could have use it to cook.
Same with B&Ws speakers.
Same, and I can understand, with Magnepan, eventhough it was marketed as a tough beefy amp capable of driving any load with huge power reserves. I have sent the amp 3 times for repair. I have never been able to keep this amp running more than 3 weeks without issues. The third time, Adcom sent me a new unit. 3 weeks later, it gave up. I did not want to send it back a fourth time. And Adcom were so proud of themselves that they propose to take back the 5300 and sell me a 5400 30% off! I certainly did not want to heat my house with a 5400.
So I took the 5300 to the dump and the only regret I have is to have paid probably around $400-500 for it back then.
My guess is that in the late 90s Adcom took a gamble and got their stuff manufactured in China where consistent quality was non-existent at the time. Or worse there was a huge error in the 5300 design, which would demonstrate that Audio and amplification is really not what Adcom should do.

Chrisr,

Heat generated from a power amp is not necessarily an indication that there is something wrong with an amp. Your amp may have been biased toward class "A", though I don't remember if my 5400 II ran hot or not. You have not experienced a SS amp running hot unless you run pure class "A" amplification from the likes of Pass Labs or others. You can't touch it for more than a second or so.

I actually liked my Adcom 5400 II very much and it was not bright in my system.

Biased toward class A is the explanation I got, but when I am saying it was hot, it was HOT, scary HOT. To the point that it was self-destructing every three weeks, and with plenty of air around it.
But when it worked, yes I found it to sound good.