ARC Ref 75 vs. Ref 75 SE

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!

To me, the real crux of the ARC update/improvement matter is this: Let's say about ten years ago you had ten grand to spend on a pre-amp (must be nice!). Amongst your choices were the EAR-Yoshino 912 (designed by Tim Paravicini, a man very much like Roger Modjeski) and the ARC Reference whatever. The Ref, like all ARC products, has been updated/improved numerous times in the ensuing years, while the 912 remains unchanged. And the 912 STILL sounds better! How much has the owner of a Ref pre-amp spent to keep his pre-amp competitive? About the same as it's original cost? Hey, I'm just asking.

Now, look inside a Ref pre-amp, then inside a 912. The Ref chassis is stuffed with parts, lots and lots of them. Some may find this simple-minded, but to me it seems like the ARC designers have lost their way, and are just throwing everything but the kitchen sink into their electronics. Turntable critics feel the same about Harry Weisfeld's VPI designs. First one design, then another, then a third, each time claiming the new design is the best way to make a turntable. Every time ARC announces an update to a product, it is touted as being a drastic/huge/etc. improvement over the previous incarnation. You'd think with all the radical improvements, reproduced music would by now sound better than live!

Well, the flip side and potential benefit of the ARC upgrades to the folks particularly on this site is that you can probably buy the SE versions used and get a significant discount on both the unit and the improvements. Much like buying a McCormack Rev. Whatever amp -- much better amp at a relatively small premium to what a used original unit would cost. And like Oregonpapa said, nobody's forcing you to do the upgrades and the original unit would've cost substantially more if they offered it off the bat. Choose your poison, but I think giving consumers a choice in how much they want to pay for whatever performance is perfectly fine.