I have a good friend who understands audio circuits better than most of us know the image of our hands & faces. I have observed him to understand & doctument the history of any particular electronic circuit to its orgins; nothing (in electronics) seens to escape his mind-set.
Armed with 60-80 year old manuals pencil & paper Gary ,devoted 30+ years of research & study to circuits measuring and applying time honored mathamatical formula's to a collection of tube amps (50+ pairs in total). Never one to just leave an error in a circuit , Gary applied his knowledge to a "Hall of Fame" of amps ; each sounding more breathtaking following revision, be that an intentional or error(s) of omission by the initial designer(s).These revisions he applied one at a time until the finished unit was(to my ears and others)a work of art. Those efforts out-stripped any re-worked products hyped in the aura of "Best-Much Better in Audio Land". He is sucessful due to an understanding of the components that make up a circuit , its tolerances , limits and improvement far removed from the cap-changing crowd. That understanding is so fluid that when exchanging ideas with someone like Lew Johnson or others they appeared to express amazement having met someone who understood a product as well or better than they.
Moreover, from our friendship I learned the importance of design , execution and manufacture as touch-stones of what makes a product Ok vs a Classic . Price rarely reflects value , and value may become even more important today as we have endured historic price rises .
The A-500's are not exactly classics , nor are they Ok but they are quite a value for the $.
