ARC Ref 75 vs. Ref 75 SE

And we can clearly hear the degradation whenever something unnecessary is put into the circuit. Just turning off the display lights on the ARC SE gear improves the sound. It becomes more relaxed and three dimensional. Who knows what switches intended to save a resistor in the event a tube blows would do to the sound. I guess if one hasn't experienced this phenomenon, its as though it doesn't exist. Go figure.

By the way ... There's 375 hours on my amp now ... and it really opened up at about 300 hours. Phenomenal amp.

Bdp24, hasn't that been there marketing plan for 30 years now?

Dweller, I agree with you but I don't think they do that.

Bifwayne wrote....Have tubes arced and taken out bias resisters?? Yes!! But how often?? Maybe once or twice a year. And since I've been using KT-120 and KT-150 power tubes, tube arcing has been a very rare occurrence.

Once or twice a year?? You call that not too often. I call it unacceptable. Audio Research are not exactly new to the game.

Brf ... tubes arc. It's what they do. The problem isn't with the amp ... it's about the nature of tubes. The only fair push back point is that ARC doesn't use circuit breakers. I can't answer that question because I'm not an electrical engineer. All I can do is pass along what ARC told me. Take it FWIW.