I think my ability to afford higher end gear was transitional in that decade. My memories are limited to the early 80's and NYAL which was my first experience of the warm, lush sound of tubes, along with the Dynaco 70. What I have set in my memory of those is what I'd describe as a more romantic sound...certainly colored, a bit mushy perhaps (what a horrible adjective to apply to audio reproduction, but it's more an emotion I'm after there). I doubt I'd like them if I heard them today, but who knows. I was completely unimpressed by muscle amps like Phase Linear - they just gave me a headache. Now there were some Krells from that period, and perhaps a Levinson, that really turned my back around to seeing what SS could do right without the associated headaches.
How do we remember 1970s amplifiers?
I would be curious to hear some of the memories and impressions associated with the following short list of 1970s amplifiers:
- McIntosh "first generation" SS amps, MC2105, MC2505, MC2300, MC250, MC2100
- Dynaco Stereo 400 and Stereo 120
- Phase Linear 400 and 700
- Bang & Olufsen "slide rule" receivers (i.e. especially blackface Beomaster 4000)
- Original Ampzilla (not Son of Ampzilla)
I've chosen this list mainly because they cover a wide range of approaches to solving the issues of early semiconductor technology, and they were all pretty mainstream products in the U.S. I'm excluding the Japanese receivers/amps not out of predjudice; it's simply that the circuit designs varied quite a bit with each model, and thus harder to broadly classify their characteristics.
I'm interested in impressions of both sonic and non-sonic attributes, and a preferred ranking of the above, if you like.
- McIntosh "first generation" SS amps, MC2105, MC2505, MC2300, MC250, MC2100
- Dynaco Stereo 400 and Stereo 120
- Phase Linear 400 and 700
- Bang & Olufsen "slide rule" receivers (i.e. especially blackface Beomaster 4000)
- Original Ampzilla (not Son of Ampzilla)
I've chosen this list mainly because they cover a wide range of approaches to solving the issues of early semiconductor technology, and they were all pretty mainstream products in the U.S. I'm excluding the Japanese receivers/amps not out of predjudice; it's simply that the circuit designs varied quite a bit with each model, and thus harder to broadly classify their characteristics.
I'm interested in impressions of both sonic and non-sonic attributes, and a preferred ranking of the above, if you like.