ARC Ref 75 vs. Ref 75 SE

Well said Oregonpapa!

Thank you.

What I see is that typically, manufacturers come out with "new, better" products every two years or so. This to me is to keep their name in the papers and especially the magazines that review products. This is true for solid state and tube manufactures. Pass labs, Jeff Rowland, etc. Just because AR provides an "upgrade" to their products doesn't make this any different. I prefer the upgrade than a wholesale issuance of a "brand new and better" product.

The new and better product is really not, just new and different tubes, different capacitors, upgrades in the power supply, etc. But basically the same circuit design.

Also, the resale value of upgradeable products is higher than the resale value of completely discontinued products.

To me (in my humble opinion), it would appear wayyyy more disingenuous if a company came out with some new and better product and discontinued the other product after a year or so.

You have to get products out of the door eventually. To keep doing R&D forever would just be stupid in a business sense. So, some bright Engineer finds a better capacitor or better tube a year or so later. But the basic circuit design is very good. I would upgrade the existing product, instead of coming out with a new product that is basically the same.

In my opinion, the AR REF250 is hands down the best amp I have ever heard. I imagine the circuit design is the same for the REF75 and REF150. Why come out with entirely new amps? Add the simple upgrades, offer them to existing customers also, and move on.

I choose to not believe that AR would intentionally come out with a "subpar" product with the final intention of offering an upgrade later. What is the point of that? They could have just as easily come out with an "entirely" new product (that was basically the upgrade) and called it something else.

It is a great company, that puts many people to work and in direct comparisons with other "great" products, they are equal to or better. So, they are doing a great job.

The exception to the simple upgrade theory is the Mark Levinson 23.5. That was a wholesale upgrade that incorporated major changes. Yet Mark Levinson still considered it an upgrade and actually offered this upgrade to owners of 23 units. That too me was really cool.

Expensive, but cool.

enjoy

I have ARC gear so I am not a hater. I was speaking to a local well known tech a couple of weeks ago and I told him what I had. I told him I had a current ARC preamp but I have been thinking about upgrading my older amp. He told me he feels the older ARC gear is built better than the new gear and also sounds better. I found that an Interesting statement from an authorized service tech that works on a lot of different well known product.

BIF---It's great to hear that your newish ARC power amps have been trouble free. Everyone (except Tim Paravicini!) seems to feel the tubes being made now are pretty darn good, with lower rates of arcing and shorting than in the past, which is especially good news for ARC power amp owners. Keith Herron even advises against tube rolling in his products, saying that while old tubes will change the sound, the new tubes (for instance the Sovtek 12AX7 he uses) provide lower distortion in his circuits. And I really like the look of the ARC natural faceplate with silver handles---very elegant and tasteful. They rid ARC's of the laboratory/industrial look black handles give them.

Bill Johnson had his Winter home only a few miles from me, in Indian Wells, the Bel-Air/Brentwood of the California Desert. He had Brooks out to his place to set-up his turntable, and Brooks, the dirty rat, didn't take me with him! Bill and his Audio Research Corp. created not only great sounding products starting in the very early 70's, thereby turning around the whole decline in sound quality that Hi-Fi was going through at the time (early solid state), but also created the market for high performance music systems. We all owe him an enormous debt.

And though HP and his TAS is often credited with introducing ARC to audiophiles, it was actually J. Gordon Holt who did so in Stereophile, reviewing the SP-2 and Dual 50 in 1971, the SP-3 and D-51 & D-75 the following year. High End shops starting popping up all over the country to sell the new gear, Walter Johnson (who now makes the Last record care products) starting his Audio Arts store near me in Livermore California. I'm still trying to recapture the magic of my first big system that I bought from Walt---Tympani's bi-amped with ARC power amps!