Audio Research Reference 5SE reliability


After reading the glowing revieuw on the Stereophile-website by Brian Damkroger on the ARC REF5SE there was a comment that: quote: by Audioware on nov 15, 2012,

"These pres are outstanding. However the problem is their poor reliability. 06 (six) of them were already on my services bench this year to fix problems with the transformer that feeds the dgital, the remote control and the on-off switch, circuits. It is a small xformer below the circuit board that burns out frequently. Another very serious problem is with the 6H30s filament regulators that do not stand for the increased current demanded by the new 6H30s intead of the old 6922s. ARC has to pay more attention to these problems!"

I already checked my dealer, who was really surprised and did not recognise these problems.

Comments will be greatly appreciated! Thanks.
sequence56
Elizabeth and Dbarger, the OP is from the Netherlands, so I'm guessing that the units wouldn't be going back to ARC for warranty repairs. The warranty repairs are probably being handled by the European distributer.
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Netherlands Schmetherlands, the story still sounds like a bunch of horse shmidt.
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Hi guys,

Thanks so far. After the initially worrying about ARC caused by Mr Audioware I am going to listen to Ref5SE within the next weeks, in comparison with Krell 202/Phantom. I got already a great deal on a 5SE with a discount of 40% off new-price.
Any thoughts about ARC Ref5SE against Krell 202/Phantom are welcome.

All the best.
As I was instantly floored with the sq of the ARC Ref5SE overall, I bought one. Having now some 35 hours on it and it is already better than just new out of the box.