Harman Kardon Citation 22 No Love?

Well you all are right about one thing and that is that they sound amazing! Yes they were all biased incorrectly from the factory and the left channel also had to have a mod done on it as there were some errors on the main PC board on how the L ch. Bias circuit is configured. I have a few of these amps and all have been re- biased and modified and now they run just barely warm and they are so reliable.

They have an incredibly warm sound. One can listen to music for hours and not have any listening fatigue. Even the Citation 21 Pre-amp matches so well with it.
I'm very happy to own these classic 80's audio gear.

I don't have any experience w/H-C Citation amps but did note that Jim McShane appears to work with Citation gear. Check out his website. I think it's a mod/upgrade offering but not sure. In any event, it seems to me he wouldn't work with the brand unless there was some inherent quality.

I believe that all the Citation amps followed certain quirky design principles laid down by head HK designer Matti Otala. Definitely a different way to skin the (power amp) cat. A quick Google search will return a ton of info about the design and help explain why they are distinctive (and, IMHO, very, very good) sounding SS amps.

The new HK990 integrated amp (that I'm about to buy once they provide a software patch for the glitchy DSP chip) has a power amp section using the same basic Citation design.

Marty

Do you have notes on the bias circuit modification

H/K was the first company to realize the importance of square waves and wide frequency response. H/K i.e. Matti Otala designed their amps, including the Citation 12, to output great square waves at both 20Hz and 20khz. A noble task. Most amps of that era couldn't come close to the wide bandwidth output of the Citation amps. It became so important that most audio magazines of that era posted square wave response photos of the amps that were tested and reviewed.