Well ..This Is Interesting...What Do You Think.?? Food For Thought..Or BS?

Its a pity that Bob Carver had his name associated with the Crimson 275 tube amp, a poor design with grossly fraudulent specs (rated at 75 watts per channel but found to have 15 watt output transformers, for example). Completely at odds with his prior work.

“Legendary Chops” ‘nough said!

Its a pity that Bob Carver had his name associated with the Crimson 275 tube amp, a poor design with grossly fraudulent specs [...]. Completely at odds with his prior work.

Yes, the Crimson episode was a disgrace, though Bob comported himself quite graciously throughout the whole thing (to add insult to injury, the Crimson also suffered from unsafe grounding).

However, overinflated specs, hype, vaporware, value-driven manufacturing and dodgy safety have always been hallmarks of Carver gear since the Phase Linear days. But so have innovation, talent and (when planets aligned) engineering brilliance.

I’ve restored several Carver pieces. I have an early TX-11 tuner that looks like a scary, factory-bodged mess inside, but it sounds great and it outperforms tuners that were far more expensive back in the day. As always, it’s complicated. 

Can we get a SS amp to sound like an Audio Note Ongaku, Berning, or top AR amps?

I question the inference that comparing the vintage Yamaha to a current model represents ALL of high end SS.  

If you are old enough, this info was splashed all over the place back in the day, and the "Challenge"