Is the moscode 600 a great amplifier?

I bought both my 600's in the late 80's and had the first one modified in the 90's.

There are a number of advantages to the modified amps. Better binding posts, and inputs as mentioned above. The protection circuit is taken out of the audio path, and on, and on.

But even the stock amp is very good.

You can come very close to the current Moscode at a fraction of the price. Some of the mods are easily done by a moderate DIY'er.

If modified (by George) you can do a lot of tube rolling.

I have Russian NOS (1979 & 1982) 6H30p-DR in the input positions and Ediswan NOS EC88 in the driver position of the channels connected to the stats and 6GU7 in the drive position of the woofer channels.

Tube regulation DOES make a difference (therefore the 600). With Martin Logan Prodigy and ribbon super tweeters I still don't hear MOSFET mist. It could be my ears or my setup with the modified amps.

Perreaux, Belles, Pass and other well thought of (including the new Moscode at $6,500+) use MOSFET output.

Just as SS doesn't necessarily have to be hard and brittle or tube don't have to be sweet and gentle. I don't believe all MOSFETs have to be "misty".

My system with two modified NYAL Moscode 600's;

http://forum.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/fr.pl?vevol&1200440547&

As to comments above about Autofomers.

The 600's always sounded WONDERFUL into dynamic drivers, modified or not.

When I first went to E-stats they did NOT sound that good. I almost got rid of them. I went to some VTL mono blocks (160) they were only marginally better. It wasn't entirely the amps. It was partially the entire system.

In an effort to get the VTL's to sound good I eventually went to autoformers. It did not do much for the VTL's but I eventually brought one of my Moscodes out of a year's retirement in the garage and tried it with the Autoformers. Holly ***t, there was the glory of the Moscodes that I remembered, as I upgraded the system, including speaker wire, the Moscodes eventually sounded better without the Autoformers and I moved them along.

So, given the speakers you are using, a good Moscode 600 will kick ***t and two in vertical biamp should blow you away.

Hope that helps.

Bruce

The amps are even better now. Remember these are a pair of the Max mods that George Kaye does. I have Russian NOS ('79' & '81') 6H30p-DR in the four input positions. I have four Amperex Bugle Boy 6DJ8s (early '60's' in the four driver positions. And a Pope NOS 7 yes 7DJ8 in the regulator positions.

The amps are heavenly.

One further thought on modified and tube rolled Moscode 600's.

George once told me that he had bridged some 600's for a famous record maker (to remain un-named), because that is what they wanted. However, in his opinion they did not sound as good bridged as they did vertically bi-amped.

Never the less, based on experience with a different pair of amps in the late 70's. I kept trying to bridge them.

First I used a transformer input. Interesting result, but George was right. Later I bought a SS bridging unit with absolute polarity switching, still not as good as vertical bi-amping.

Eventually I bought a preamp with balanced out, but no absolute polarity switch. I built a little box to convert the balanced out to single ended with switches for absolute polarity. The box also gave me the ability to bridge the amps.

WOW, WOW, WOW!! That was what I was looking for.

I now have two preamps with balanced out, one SS, one tube. They both do a fabulous job of bridging the amps into 1000+ watt monoblocks into an 8 ohm load.

The good news is that the amps were originally stable into very difficult loads. Because they are bridged into a pair of Martin Logan Prodigy they need to be stable. These speakers are nominally 4 ohms with a dip to 1 ohm above 15kHz. Running the amps bridged the amps effectively see 1/2 that load, so a dip to 1/2 ohm.

If you are willing to do a little, to a lot, of work with them the 600's can really shine.