Audio Research Tube AMP Reliability

I have owned many ARC amps and preamps over the last 35 years. I have found them to be very reliable. The few malfunctions I experienced were tube related, not faulty circuit design or reliability issues.

A friend had the VT200, the tube blew, took out the resistor, but burned the board and replacement was not cheap...over 1K...I would never own one like that. Other designs of ARC seem more reliable. Jallen

I've been using a LS2BII pre and and VT130 power for 15 years. A resistor blew on the VT130 due to a faulty tube but Audio Research sent replacements within a few days. If you can solder, very easy to fix. I also use SED Winged C 6550s and 7308s in the VT130 with no issues. The LS2B has been flawless.

I currently own and use the following ARC products:

a). D75 - has been my old standby for 30+ years. I recently retired it till I have the time to change the filter and coupling caps it has never been serviced other than replacement tubes.
b). SP7 preamp - the mate to the D75 for the same time period currently retired but works fine and will probably rejoin the D75 when it is re-capped
c). CA50 - I did send it back to ARC once but it turned out to be an intermittent 6922 no problem with the amp itself
d). SP9MKIII another bad 6922 shorted and took out $250 worth of FET's and some resistors. It was an expensive way to learn that JJ6922's just are not suitable for use in ARC products.
e). SP3A1 - diodes shorted in the power supply board shortly after I purchased it which appears to be common problem. Currently awaiting repair or upgrade to SP3C (ihave not yet decided which)but it is even older than my SP7.
So that's one man's experience with a variety of ARC products over the years. Not too bad. I would say better than average. Probably McIntosh is the only brand better in my experience with names such as Counterpoint, GAS, NAD, Marantz, Dynaco, Sansui, Pioneer,Sherwood etc.

Good luck,Jerry

I have worked in service, and since the only units a serviceman sees are broken ones (not the other hundreds or thousands that are working) all they will ever have are negative comments. I have owned some Audio Research gear (VSi55 tube integrated, SP5 & LS3B solid state preamp, D52B & D100 solid state amp etc.) and my father started out with Audio Research equipment in the early 70's. He had an SP3A preamp with a Dual 51 and Dual 75 bi-amped driving some of the first pairs of Magneplanar Tympani speakers. He was high-end before such a term existed. Never had any trouble with anything. Recently we took one of his ARC tube amps - A Dual 79 which is a 110+ pound monster of a tube amp produced in very few numbers around 1979-1980. The amp sat for 20 years without being plugged in or powered-up. In bad practice we plugged it straight into the wall instead of using a variac to bring the voltage up slowly. We had no problems, unlike typical older equipment where something pops/smokes/glows red etc. After letting it warm up I connected it to my Magneplanar MG 1.6's and it quickly put to shame the McCormack DNA 0.5 amp I was using (no insult to the McCormack because it is a great amp). I don't know about the latest equipment (although my VSi55 was from 2006) and I could certainly not speak for all their models, but I believe ARC uses high grade components and their reputation is built on reliability and sound quality, instead of marketing and gimmics. Just my two-cents for what it's worth. From the serviceman's standpoint everything sucks when its broke.