Quicksilver audio silver 88 mono amps

Have owned the Silver 88’s for the past 5 years. I have a friend who had them previous to my purchase and still does. There is an issue with two of the electrolytics that I was fore warned by my friend, not if but when they would fail. Well finally 3 years in they failed. Mike Sanders mailed a replacement set which I replaced. Mike offered a long term fix to this problem if I would send the amps to him. Luckily for me, this was remedied by my friend who with Mike’s blessing did a final fix, improvement in the power delivery was significant, an added benefit and surprise! So it was more than just a "fix".

So as to the amps overall performance; I’ve owned ARC, Berning, CJ, Trancendent, and McIntosh tube gear and am familiar with many other esoteric/boutique amps both tube and SS. I’ve listened to the 88s for the past 5 years in my current set-up with the latest 3a DeCapo speakers. "For the money" in the right set-up one can expect reference performance well beyond what you might expect at the price. Also of importance, to me at least, point to point wiring which means long term reliability and flexibility. These are great amps and depending on the speaker might be well worthy of consideration. Amazing resolution about as good as you might ever expect, certainly that is my impression. I can’t say enough about these amps at this price point. Beyond my above comments, all amps are system dependent with a given speaker in a given system so the usual cavaets. Do your homework.

The electrolytics that are problematic are not the coupling caps. They are both 600v 50 uf rated. I would speak first with Mike Sanders if or when there is an issue. The + leads on both fried manifesting in a howling sound from the amp. I performed the replacement of these caps until my friend who has regular contact with Mike Sanders performed the final fix which involved some minor mods to acommodate a beefier power supply and better caps. 

I went through 5 different pre-amps before settling on a Bill Thalmann upgraded CJ PV9a which complements the QS amps in my set-up very nicely. I am using the Tung Sol KT 150 tubes which I prefer over the KT 88s, ymmv. A matter of trying both. I am unfamiliar with the KT 90 and KT 120 tubes in these amps.

Fsonicsmith you are spot on in recognizing the importance of the power and output transformer in tube amp designs. I am  certain this is the primary reason why all QS amps are all so consistently excellent across the board. The mid monos are a great value at the price as is the 20 watt integrated. I have had zero problems other than the cap issue noted over the past 5 years. Yeah, Mike doesn't seem too keen or that it is necessary to "upgrade" but it must be noted, these products are still built to a price point and better performance can be gotten using better components. I'm with you on that deconney.

Enjoy your Zardozmike, you made a great choice!