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Audio Research Tube AMP Reliability

I was out shopping for amps this weekend, and I ran across a guy getting his ARC tube amp repaired.

He said he really like it, but he has gone through tube replacements, and he had the thing burn up on him, the power lines on the board had smoked and burned. I saw the splices on the board, the damage was pretty big, and about $500 in repairs.

The owner of the shop said he got in ARC amps often due to poor design and reliability.

I am interested in ARC because the reviews are great, but I was wondering if other folks are having trouble with their ARC Amps?

How about the Pre-Amps?

Thanks,
Scott
128x128scottlanterman
ryder
1,690 posts
 
I own the LS-16 preamp for 3 years and never had an issue.

I owned the Sonic Frontiers Line 1 for 3 years, different story. It went into the repair workshop at least once a year without failure. After 4 failures in 3 years, I eventually got rid of it and lived a peaceful life ever since.
satch
329 posts
 
I can only comment about the LS-2 hybrid pre, and that little puppy has never let me down *knocks on wood*.
chadeffect
586 posts
 
I had many Audio research amps and pre amps. They all worked beautifully. I blow a fuse in one once thats it.
smoffatt
205 posts
 
Have owned several ARC units too numerous to list here. What i have now is REF2 MKI, REF Phono, Classic 120 mono's all modified by GNSC and all with vintage NOS tubes. Not once an ARC unit blew up on me and i have always done my own tube replacement and biasing. No reliability issues with the models i have owned over the years.
Hope this helps.
neddyboy
2 posts
 
I was given an ARC Dual 75 gold front by a friend who found it on the sidewalk here in San Francisco after an estate sale. One of the power tubes had popped, all the filter caps were dead, and the power supply section of the board was fried. I replaced the caps and burned components, but I really didn't want to replace the power tubes. They had been a matched quad of old US tubes, GEs I think. Anyway, I found a nearly-matching single tube on eBay and biased everything closely. It did take me a few near runaways to get it all right, but since then it's been running fine. The boards are a little fragile, with small easily-broken traces, but the component quality is good.
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