Bifwynne, having an ARC repair tech nearby does make ownership of their power amps more reasonable. Imagine having to ship a heavy power amp to Minnesota every time a tube blows! In his writings on amp design and building-in reliability, Roger Modjeski made an analogy something like this: What if a car maker designed and made his vehicles such that when a tire blew (which is likely to happen) the suspension was sacrificed? And that this design choice was made because to prevent damage to the suspension in the event of a tire blowing, the suspension's performance was deemed to have to be slightly compromised. A fair and reasonable trade-off? That's for consumers to decide. Roger claims (of course) that his design protects the amp from damage by tubes without compromising it's sound quality. He states that the idea of using the circuit parts themselves to protect the rest of the amp from damage by it's tubes is just plain, bad engineering. Inelegant, at least!
Tom pointed out something else in the ARC amps---the burn marks on the circuit board, around the tube sockets. Mounting power amp output tube sockets on a circuit board = a very bad idea. In the mid-80's I went to hear Bill Johnson talk when he came to a local dealer. He mentioned that the ARC products were built with a projected lifespan of twenty years. At the time that seemed like an eternity---it doesn't now.
Of course, if you own ARC power amps and haven't had any problems, non of this matters. My history with ARC began in '72 with me turning on my brand new SP-3 pre-amp, fresh out of it's shipping carton. It immediately made a POP! sound, and I had my first smell of a fried resistor. Welcome to ARC ownership!
