Experiences, good and bad, with VTL

Avnut. I have a lot of experience with Tube Research amps. I owned the GT 400 and a good friend owned the GT 300.

What do you want to hear from experienced users? Quality of sound, reliability?

On the thread topic, I have heard VTL in several situations, and several friends own them. I think they are a great product and am not aware of VTL having any more reliability problems than other high end / high power tube amps. All big tube amps will need some maintenance and tube replacement. It goes with the territory, but well worth it in my opinion.

I heard the 750 and the Wotan. The 750 was at a friends home in California. He was with Fi magazine before it went under. He had a very good system, Rockport turntable with Koetsu running into a Jadis pre, driving Soundlab M-1's.

The friend that used two pair of VTL's was a reviewer for Absolute Sound. We have spent enough time with each other to know what each hears and likes.

His combo of VTL 750 plus VTL Wotan bi amping the big Magneplaners was absolutely state of the art. He was using Purist and Cardas cable, Basis turntable with Graham arm, Aesthetix Io and Callisto phono and preamp.

Having owned many tube amps myself, my experience is that overall they are higher maintenance than equivalent transistor models. They deliver more music and therefore make up for the effort in my opinion.

The VTL delivers great sound. Two years ago I considered the VTL 750 for myself. This was to drive my Soundlab Ultimates. It turned out to be such a bad year financially that I could not afford them and instead bought Wolcotts Presence 220.

Still, It would be nice to do an A-B comparison in my own home, even though the Wolcott is delivering the best sound I have had to date.