The OP is asking about Levinson gear. At least the classic era Levinsons, some of them do cook themselves to death. I have a No.23 and the repair job is going to be near $3000. The authorized repair center explained that the Levinsons do tend to do that.
Class A amplifiers
I was watching YouTube reviews on Hifi and one guy said if you like Class A amps you have to accept that every 3 or 4 years you have to send them in to get serviced Becasue the heat inevitably causes issues? Is this true? I have a friend with an older Maek Levinson Class A amp and he was looking to sell,it to me, and am just wondering if Class A amps are like a boat, always costing you more . Anyone?
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While they are "high bias" Class-A Plinius 102 amps cannot be biased "Pure Class-A to their rated 8ohm wattage output". They run A/B. To have those heatsinks at a constant safe 55-to 60c they would have to be approximately 4 x that size for the amp to be safe to be pure class-A all the way. Search all you like and won’t find it stated anywhere they are Biased up Pure Class-A all the way into 8ohms, not even on their archived website. https://web.archive.org/web/20060115165723/http://www.pliniusaudio.com/pro/pro02.htm At a guess I would say 50watts of Class-A and the rest is B up to 125w Cheers George |
No reason why a Class A amp of any rating can’t be designed withObviously no experience building >100w Pure Class-A biased amps. This is why the Plinius 102 is no way 125w Pure Class-A bias, and is not stated anywhere that it is but from those mimicking the sales person/s sales pitch THERMAL RUNAWAY BECOMES A REAL PROBLEM at Class-A 100w with B to 150w when combined with ambient temps. Also internal component temps are massive and life greatly shortened ME did the correct way here using speed controlled chimney heat sinks, with their 60kg monster. https://ibb.co/TbQShYK https://ibb.co/WzQGpMb And so did Krell with their real Class-A’s like the KSA-100 and 50 https://ibb.co/zQ8vJF6 Instead of using pseudo class-A plateau/sliding bias in their later models I went a different way, 3 x bigger than the ME-15500’s but using liquid cooling for the 6 x 100w Pure Class-A, I built over 10 years, using pump/radiator/fan combo transistor heat jacket, but after 15 years use corrosion of some parts became a problem. Cheers George |
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