VAC - any comments? Good or bad.

I will echo Ryriken's comments about VAC suppottin their older gear. Kevin is very responsive and enthusiastic. Don't hesitate if you have an eye on used VAC gear.

VAC is a great company. I own a discontinued linestage preamp and Kevin has been very helpful with suggestions. He even helped me figure out a problem that ultimately stemmed from another non-VAC component! I don't think you can go wrong with used VAC gear. Good luck.

Count me in as another happy VAC owner. Before I bought the Standard PRE LE, I had a couple of conversations with Kevin and found him very sincere and pleasant. He didn't have that "salesman pitch"--I know 'cause I've been in retail for more than I can remember.
I can't say enough about the fit, finish and sound of my PRE.

Earlier this year I got the VAC PA100.100 and a Standard Preamp LE edition. Even though I bought these both used, Kevin emailed me to welcome me to the VAC family. He really is a great guy to talk to. The PA100.100 is near their lowest model in separates and is simply a great and underrated amp. I paired the VAC with the Merlin VSM-M and am loving every second of this wonderful pairing. I've always lusted after VAC because it just seemed like beautiful gear that had a great reputation for sounding excellent. I agree now that I'm in the family.

I too expected only good things from my first use of a VAC amp, and lugged home a well-broken in VAC Avatar a few years ago. The long story is somewhere else posted. Suffice it to say that it's horrendously high output impedence wreaked havoc with my newly-aquired Parsifal Encores (which are VERY easy to drive, btw), with disturbances as much as
+/- 5dB across the spectrum, as finally carefully measured
against two reference amps. Horribly overripe mid-bass, a giant low treble peak and no upper treble "air" made all discs unlistenable. I faxed curves to VAC and was finally told that the inexpensive AVATAR's output tubes were famous for nonlinearity and unpredictable results with real speakers, and that if I wanted really fine performance I had to get their bigger amps. Sad to say the Audio Refinement Complete ($995) I had on hand absolutely trounced
the $3800 Avatar in both triode and pentode modes.
I then came to look as Stereophiles "predicted plot" of real performance with an 8 ohm load with glass amps once in awhile in JA's reviews, but NEVER saw one with swings of the amplitude I measured (and many of us heard) through that Avatar. And yes, both channels were the same, the tubes were ok, power output was correct, etc.
Glad their higher end stuff is more linear, and that they've recently completely redesigned the 'tar.