How do we remember 1970s amplifiers?

Loved Phase Linear 400 driving ESS Towers, but my budget dictated Yamaha integrated, which I still have (upgraded by Ezekiel).

Not trying to be argumentative. As I mentioned above, I used to own Crown gear. As I recall, it was considered SOTA in its day. I beieve it was top rated by J. Gordon Holt's Stereophile (before it accepted advertising) back in the 70s and was used to drive the most demanding power hungry hi-end speakers, e.g., Tympani panels, etc.

Yet, it's earlier repuattion does not appear to have survived time. Just a question: why is that? I admit that I have not critically listened to Crown gear recently nor compared it to my current gear. Perhaps some of the oldheads out there can tell me why the old vintage Crown gear has fallen out of favor. Maybe it was the use of copious amounts of NF to achieve spectacular performance stats??? Dunno.

Loved that old stuff. Happy Holidays!

Apt amp and pre,most realistic sound 4 the buck ever !

The closest I come to your list was a B&O turntable with the non pivoting tonearm and snap in cartridge. I liked it a lot.
Aside from that was a Quad 303 preamp and a BGW500D amp that brought me lots of joy. The rest is quite foggy.
I know this is not from your list but, see what you started.

Wow, I'm really enjoying everybody's comments, thank you. I particularly like the venomous reactions to the Phase Linear amps . . . as I think it's in so many ways the poster child of 1970s solid-state amplification.

Yet, it's earlier repuattion does not appear to have survived time. Just a question: why is that? I admit that I have not critically listened to Crown gear recently nor compared it to my current gear. Perhaps some of the oldheads out there can tell me why the old vintage Crown gear has fallen out of favor.

Bifwynne, these sorts of questions are what I had in mind to discuss when I started the thread . . . and I'd like to try as much as possible to avoid the subject of NFB, as it has a way of hijacking threads. Specifically, I think the "1970s transistor sound" is related much more to poor linearity in several key circuit areas, principally the "quasi-complementary" (all-NPN) output stage and its inescapable notch distortion.

But the Crown gear is an excellent subject, especially as it compares to Phase Linear . . . I have my suspicions that Bob Carver actually derived his designs from the Crown DC-300 schematic. They both use quasi-complementary output and driver stages, although there's a subtlety in the Crown design that's not immediately obvious: the drivers operate in Class A and in parallel with the output stage through the crossover region, smoothing out the notch distortion to a significant degree. It also makes the whole thing far less temperature sensitive for its bias conditions.

Although I don't know the exact chronology, I find it interesting that when Crown added an opamp front-end to the DC-300A (and D150) that Phase Linear followed suit by doing the same thing with the 700 Series II and 400 Series II. But Carver's amps still show the earmarks of a cheap copy, especially how he cut costs significantly by simply using an electrolytic to bootstrap the voltage-amp load, rather than the true current-source transistor powered off a separate supply rail in the Crown design. Carver was also obviously having stability issues with all these amps, as shown by the ferrite beads and picofarad-value capacitors "liberally sprinkled throughout the schematic" (to borrow an expression from Douglas Self).

All in all, from today's perspective both are dated designs and have a couple of the same flaws, but the Crown is a thoroughly well-optimized and beautifully engineered amplifier, and I think this shows in its sonics and its remarkable reliability. I'd say that with easier loudspeaker impedances, one could still do much worse than a DC-300 today.