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.

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.

It is nice to see such a well-written note that takes into account the relative nature of this hobby and system matching. Thank you. 
Out of interest, what is entailed with the "final fix"? I gather you are referring to the output caps. Is this correct?
On a different topic, my humble op is that a tube amp's largest limiting factor is the quality of the input and output transformers, particularly the former. That is where this amp likely shines. 

You can not go wrong with any Quicksilver amp.....  built like tanks, simple, reliable.  I have a pair of Mid Monos and they are awesome.  Listening to them right now !  I have had a few tubes fail but never a problem, the fuse reacted on each occasion.  They are seven years old and see a lot of use.  

I just bought Mike's new headphone amp sight unseen because of my experience with the Mid Monos.  It exceeded my expectations,  it is incredible in both sound quality and build .

As with anything used it's a gamble , but his gear is so reliable the risk is minimal, especially if bought from a place like the music room

I replaced my high-end Cary tube amps with QS Mono 120s with KT150 tubes. I like 88s too in some ways, shared DNA which led to Mono 120 design of course. At first, I thought these Mono 120s were a slight downgrade for me, even using my better Cary SLP-98 preamp with really good 6SN7 tubes. Had to try it. Keep reading. Had an upgrade vision too for later on. It has paid off. With some good burn-in time and patience, it has paid off big time in stock form, but just like any amp, there is more room for growth with slight tweaks that can turn these amps in to giant killers!

After 100hrs burn in, ditched the entry level stock EI and JJ small signal/driver tubes and rotated in various vintage NOS tubes and tried PSVANE too with much improved results - way better. Several here on Agon messaged me since and have done the same, like a good underground group does. :) Same applies to Silver 88s, Mono 60s. Caution bringing up caps with Mike. It’s not his business plan I gather now days. He shoots for reliability and consistency #1, "no changes" i get it. Some upgrades can help - sometimes.   Proceed at your own risk.

After tube rotation of small tubes, the stock coupling caps are not bad, Mike likes them a lot. I was "okay" with the stock caps. Against conservative judgement (don’t tell Mike - haha, he’ll get pissed off), I upgraded my coupling caps in the Mono 120s to a really high end set of Mundorf EVO Supreme Silver Golds, same as used in $22k Cary amps. Just HAD to know. Bugged me. And, wow, sure enough - it brings the QS amps to a whole new level of 3 dimensional sound, tone, texture. The QS amps have the bones for sure. Enjoy.

For those of you with QS amps, what preamp are you running with them?