Amplifiers:A Keeper for Life. Do you know of one ?

Convergent Audio Technology JL-2. Purity of SET with enough power (100Watts, Class A) to drive almost any speaker out there -- that make'em easier to "keep for life"

So many different keepers. Interesting.

Hyperbole

That is a good question. One purpose would be to identify some of the best amps available for consideration. What would be even more interesting to me is to identify the best amp you have owned and what three other amps you owned or compared them to; to provide some context and weight to a judgement. It is different to say Amp X is the best amp I heard, and the other amps you are familiar with are Arcam, Rotel, or NAD (nothing wrong with thes, but...) versus having owned/or having worthwhile familiarity with CAT, Atmasphere, or Lamm (or others of that ilk). To some extent, these types of contextualized judgements help assess the strength or relevance of the judgement, a type of listener IQ (don't in anyway mean to sound snobbish about this). Additionally, when anyone says that an amp blows everything out of the water, or incomparable to anything else, I immediately grow weary.

I, we(?) all know what you mean. I got the itch and bought a few amps (3) while I've had my CAT JL2s, I sold all three and kept the CATs, so maybe, just maybe...

I've tried very hard to find an amp that would let me sell my CAT JL2, SS, many tube amps, and unfortunately I have not found anything close to the CATs (many amps that sounded wonderful in their own right, and easy amps to live with). This is unfortuante since the run hot as hell, consume a lot of power, are expensive to retube, and weigh 180lbs - all things I hate, but the sound in my system with the CATs is incomparable (it has always been clearly superior, not a hairsplitting difference), so getting rid of it is just very unlikely to happen.

Arthursmuck and Fplanner, what the contenders versus the 300.1? That is, what else did you listen to that you felt the 300.1 was better than?

I sold the keeper. I thought the CAT JL2 was a KFL, but when I heard the Atma-sphere M-60s on my system with the Merlins that are very OTL friendly...well the CAT is gone. I still think the CAT will sound better with more speakers, but if OTL can work with your speakers it is very special indeed. Now if you have a CAT, there really is no reason to think of something else, except for the fact this hobby doesn't isn't really a hobby if you keep anything for life.

I love many, but the Music Reference MR10 MKII is not only a keeper, but it might actually last that long without failure.

With the right speakers, there is no reason to ever replace the Atma-sphere M60s, though I will hold on to my Music Reference RM10 MKIIs for as long as I listen to music. I thought my CAT JL2 was a keeper for life, and if they did not weigh 200lbs, I probably would have kept them, but their weight and heat got me into the Atma-spheres and when an OTL works with a speaker, I've not found anything better.

When you get tired of switching amps every few years (months), whichever one you have may be a keeper for life - if you are old enough.

This feels a bit like grade inflation where half the class gets As.