Im looking to add a power amplifier and use my current integrated as a pre amp. I am currently running arcam fmj a18 integrated and linn av5140 speakers. I have looked at 2 audiolab 8000 mono's, a quad 909 and a musical fidelity 275/2. I am looking around £5-600 mark for second hand which makes it difficult to get a demo at home. I listen to a wide variety of music prefering cd format. Any suggestions or advice would be greatly appreciated. Cheers.
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Which 2nd hand power amplifier?
- Thread starter Samson4321
- Start date
Do a search on German and UK ebay for amps less than your budget, starting with most expensive first.
Either buy whatever seems like the biggest bargain to you, or come back here with a list of the ones you're most interested in.
You might also want to check out pro power amps, like the vintage top of the range Crown ones.
Of the 3 you mentioned, my personal preference would be the Quad.
You might find that your system sounds better without your integrated as a pre-amp. IE with your CD source: use either a power amps inbuilt volume control or a simple resistor based volume control between CD player and power amp, with short (0.5 metre) interconnects.
Either buy whatever seems like the biggest bargain to you, or come back here with a list of the ones you're most interested in.
You might also want to check out pro power amps, like the vintage top of the range Crown ones.
Of the 3 you mentioned, my personal preference would be the Quad.
You might find that your system sounds better without your integrated as a pre-amp. IE with your CD source: use either a power amps inbuilt volume control or a simple resistor based volume control between CD player and power amp, with short (0.5 metre) interconnects.
Your post sounds reminiscent to my experience: I started out with an integrated amp, added a power amp and eventually upgraded the preamp too. One thing I overlooked at first was the input/output sensitivity of the two boxes. I think there is a general rule of thumb that the input impedance of the power amp should be at least 10 times greater than the output impedance of the preamp, if not, the bass response may suffer. The names you mention sound pretty respectable, but I thought it might be worth mentioning nonetheless.
Cheers,
LDTM
Cheers,
LDTM
Al ears
Well-known member
- Nov 23, 2008
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Not wanting to throw a spanner in the works but I personally would not be looking at going the pre/power route with that sort of budget.
It can be a bit of a minefield. Sell your Arcam and put all your funds into a very good integrated amp would be my advise.
Pre/power combo's mean you are paying, unnecessarily for extra enclosures/power supplies/cables etc all of which can end up reducing overall sound quality (unless you happen to get the right combo of course).
It can be a bit of a minefield. Sell your Arcam and put all your funds into a very good integrated amp would be my advise.
Pre/power combo's mean you are paying, unnecessarily for extra enclosures/power supplies/cables etc all of which can end up reducing overall sound quality (unless you happen to get the right combo of course).
Going 2nd hand means you can throw any rules or guidelines about what you should buy at any particular price point completely out the window.
Let's see what sort of amps an ebay trawl brings up before deciding on integrated or pre-power.
It could be there's a mega bargain integrated available now. Or there could be a better bargain pre-power for the OP's budget.
Let's see what sort of amps an ebay trawl brings up before deciding on integrated or pre-power.
It could be there's a mega bargain integrated available now. Or there could be a better bargain pre-power for the OP's budget.
lindsayt said:
I think the A18 could work well as a preamp. I've been using my own A19 as preamp into a P38 for a while now—while I figure out what digital preamp to replace it with—, and I've compared this with an A38, both by itself, and also as preamp into the P38. I thought the A38 would have a better preamp section, but found the differences to be subtle. The biggest sound differences lay in their power amp sections despite the different output impedances.
While the A18 and the A19 also sound different, they apparently use the same volume attenuator. And I wouldn't be surprised if again the differences were to be found mostly in the power amps. It seems to me that Arcam imprints any character to the sound in the amplification, and their sources and preamps are nicely neutral so should pair well with lots of gear.
So it would be a matter of trying and seeing how the A18 works as preamp. But I don't see in advance any reason why it shouldn't work well.
The preamp output of the A18 is rated at a usefully low <50Ω, same as the A38. Something to take into account is the highish nominal sensitivity of 630mV, which is around the standard for Arcam but will not take some amps to full volume. I am not sure about the Audiolab 8000M, but I think the standard input sensitivity for Audiolab is > 1V.
On German ebay at the moment there's some really nice looking amps for less than 800 euros, such as a Technics 9600, a Uher pre-power combination, Pioneer M90a's, an Accuphase E-206 integrated, a 270 watt Yamaha MX 70, some Revox integrateds etc etc etc.
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