How do we remember 1970s amplifiers?

You forgot the Audio Research D150 and D75 around that time, late 70's. I ran a high end hi fi store. We had Ampzilla's (nicer sounding than the Flame Linear) and BGW's (too harsh) or the Crowns (REALLY harsh). SAE was around then too, had some cost effective stuff that competed with the Crowns and Phase Linears well. Nothing sounded better than the Audio Research in my store. I had Magnaplanars, Dahlquist DQ10s, KEF104's (my favorite of the day) and DCM Time Windows all in my high end room. An Audio Research SP3A hooked to a AR D150 amp to a KEF104 was the best we had.....Nice Micro Seiki turntable with a Grace tonearm and a Dynavector cartridge.....

Lacee , so pleasant to read your comments, they are so parallel to my own. The store I worked at was a little place called Wack Electronics in Milwaukee Wisconsin-from 1975 to about 1977-then to a sound contractor, then back to the store until I became a rep in 1980. You are right about the tube stuff, it WAS better even then. (McIntosh too, but I wasn't a dealer) As a rep, I reprsented Jon Dahlquist, NAD, the folks at Crown, and Joe Grado- Proton too when it arrived. It was quite a time in hifi, I was a little late to party, there was so much business, so many hobbyists buying stereos in the 70s. By 1980 it was changing, rack systems where coming to big box stores, reel to reel was fading as Nakamichi took off. I so remember that Advent cassette recorder! There many very nice people in high end hi fi in those days, I think its still this way.

A DC300 in 1975 was a different beast compared to the competition than in 1980. Flame Linears in 1978 or so where the first company to meet the "dollar per watt" ideal, and at 399, the best bargain going. But boy they didn;t like to messed with. Crowns would work and work. But on something like an electrostat? Yuck! The Audio Research was smooth as could be.

NAD< what wonderful stuff in the time of the 3020, the 7020. That stuff STILL sounds good. A NAD 3020 and pair of little Fried speakers was fantastic

I eventually got more into pro, learning about live sound and installed sound where Crown eventually migrated when hi fi dried up. By the 90s it seemed high end hi fi stores where reduced to one per 1M market. "Listening to records" was no longer the cool hobby!

By the way, I just bought a Stromberg Carlson 1939 AM tube radio I found on ebay, with the acoustical labyrinth system, the very first transmission line bass system. VIntage Hi FI is still just as cool as it was new!

So few remember the whole David Halfer kit thing. The Dynaco's were so good, Halfers were equally good to their time in SS. Hafler did OK but eventually got bought by Rockford Fosgate, who also owned Accustat. I forgot his name that designed all those Accustat TransNova amps, but (memory fuzzy) he was involved with Halfer later, wasn't he? I had an interview with Halfer in the 90's (they were all pro by then), in Tempe Arizona.

Hey anyone remember when Summer CES (high end suites) was at Hotel Congress in Chicago? That was about the early 80s and all those folks would be there.....the big companies where all at McCormick Place. In winter, it was Vegas and the Riviera for the high end and everything else was at (a much smaller) LV convention Center.
Brad

Some of those old designs were pretty good and while the art has moved forward on a lot of amp features (protection, thermal and short monitoring, metering) sound was quite good in many of them. Just listening to an old mac amp is a good example of this. That Audio Research (tube) amp line in the late 70's was darn good. Dynaco's too.

I think long term amps will mean less to the market as active speakers become more and more important over the next years. Older preamps will likely gain in importance-for the front end will be ever more obvious.

Brad