Carver, THE standard of excellence IMO

He is also some kind of genius. Brought his Sunfire sub to our audio club one time, gave what seemed like an hour long tech talk on how it works. Resonance, back EMF, locomotives, and more were involved. Just an incredibly fascinating talk.

At the end he played some music. The club meets in this huge space, easily 40 ft on one side, 20 the other, with a big hallway coming in, just a very big space, and we were all stunned at the bass he got from his little sub. So evidently all the physics he was talking (that hardly any of us could follow- and yes I asked around) really works.

Not that I was all that surprised. Carver is in Lynnwood, kind of local to me, and I have run into him a couple times now. Going back to when the first really powerful amp we had was my brother’s SAE. Which when something happened to that (forget the story) it was replaced with TWO of his then new cube amps. Whatever they were called. I just remember thinking how my brother got this SAE used for almost nothing, then turns it into two brand new full warranty amps, all thanks to Bob Carver.

People love to trash anyone successful. I know. Living the dream. All they manage to do is demean themselves in the process. Bob Carver, his rep is untouchable.

My first thought on reading the OP was to chime in with that's great, doesn't surprise me, and then give my own Bob Carver story. But before I could even get that far I came across clearthink and his awful post and Franks perfectly appropriate response.

Another perfectly good thread hijacked to no good end. All in a good days work for clearthink. I sincerely hope he does get sued, and good, and that he learns from it.

And now, back to the OP.

The first powerful and really good sounding amp I had was a Phase Linear back in about 1973. Being kids we had a party and my friend brought his JBLs and I hooked up mine and pretty sure being know just enough to be dangerous kids we hooked em up 4ohm style to get more power and ran that amp so hard you could hardly stand to touch the heat sinks. Being around Christmas time it was snowing and so obviously only one thing to do, fill a bag with some snow and put it between the heat sinks.

Yeah. No kidding. 

That was actually my brothers amp so who knows what other abuse that thing got but one day he says oh its gone I got these Carver Cube amps now. What? Yeah this amp that had stood up to mega abuse didn't die and was way out of warranty but somehow something happened and Bob Carver replaced the one Phase Linear with two of his much better Cube amps. I want to say it was something stupid, like a meter quit and they didn't have an exact replacement so Bob.... whatever. Point made. Man stands behind his work.

But wait- I got more! Been mentioned Carver's in Washington. Lynnwood, WA, to be precise. Or at least was back when I first met the man giving a talk introducing Carver's Amazing Loudspeaker. Being a starving college student no money for speakers or anything else but it was a great talk and clear the man is some kind of genius.

His genius showed up again some years later when he came to Mercer Island, the Seattle audiophile club to talk about and demo his Sunfire sub. The first time I was young and didn't know that much and recall even less. This time though he talked about speaker cabinet resonance and electromotive force and how the incredible current required to get a freight train moving would pretty much reduce the whole thing to a slag of molten rubble except for the way they use this resonance which is what he does in the Sunfire. Okay so I reduced an hour talk to one sentence how much sense is it gonna make? Then after explaining design principles he fires the thing up and demonstrates it does in fact work - by shaking the living daylights out of our great big meeting room.

That's four stories over 30 years, every one nothing but positive. Carver amp takes massive abuse keeps on running. Carver standing behind his designs- even when no longer his company and no longer under warranty. Carver graciously educating, explaining and answering questions.

Integrity. Genius. Enthusiast. That's my experience of Bob Carver. 

No, and its clear he meant actual fires. If he meant figuratively, then "fires" would be his way of saying "controversial design". But what he actually said was, "Amplifiers designed, manufactured, and marketed by Bob Carver" leaving no doubt he means it literally.

Probably his best defense would be to say that "designed, manufactured, and marketed by" is a nervous tic he has where he just always has to repeat, regurgitate, and re-state everything he says over and over and over again, and without ever giving any thought to whether or not what he is saying bears any relationship with reality. In other words he could say hey look I'm a bloviating buffoon, and everybody knows it, so no harm done.

Any judge or jury would then just look at his posting history, throw up their hands and say, "case dismissed."

Or at least that is my opinion.

We will be prosecuting clearthink to the full extent of the law unless he prints a retraction in the next 10 days.

Could you please just go ahead and sue him anyway? I will be happy to chip in. I will be watching and eagerly awaiting the post where either he eats crow big time with a real and complete and believable retraction, or the clock runs out and he at last gets served his due.

Served. Heh. Good one. We can only hope.