Antique Sound Lab Hurricane Problem

==You might consider having someone add those to your amps.==

Sounds like a good idea. Since I am spending considerable amount of time inside the amps, I can probably add them myself soon.

I have found that I had a blown resistor in another socket, mascarading as a healthy one, because the meter wire was broken on that socket ! Without a signal, ASL meter just drifts down slowly from the previous value !

OK, so now all is working and they sound devine. Do other Hurricane owners have the same amount of trouble? Or do these guys stay stable after being fixed and carefully biased?

Any feedback from other owners is greatly appreciated. I am trying to decide if these amps are worth 2.5K. These are definitely the best amps I had ever heard and by a considerable margin. On the other hand I never had to do this much work, not even on my old Citation.

One should take note, however, that the latest version (beveled front sides, extruded case) have extensive reworking of the protection circuitry and the resistor issue seems to have been resolved.

Just like a first year car (& the associated bugs & recalls), ASL seems to be learning from earlier production errors and taking corrections accordingly.

Keep in mind that there just isn't anything else out there that can offer even CLOSE to the overall performance for anywhere near the price. Priced a pair of ARC VTM-200's lately? You'll see what I mean.

Despite my earlier statement, and admitting that I sold off my "2nd generation" version of the amps, they were overall, the best sounding amplification that I ever experienced in my system.

I would be open to purchasing the latest edition (with the updated revisions) despite the minor repair issues I had with the earlier version.

BTW -- rumor has it that they are coming out with a balanced/XLR input version (something I personally wanted to always see with this amp...)

I agree with Denf. It makes no sense to spend 15K on a pair of VTM-200's when you can get the same dry, sterile sonics found in the Hurricanes for 6K. Good point.

I would respectfully disagree. The hurricane's sound is anything but dry and sterile. It has replaced a single ended amp in my system and delivers a very palpable, warm and liquid sound through Magnepans 1.6s. It has a tremendous presence and a spooky reality on voice, especially. I don't know why it sounds they way it does, as it seems a very straightforward design, but I would love someone to measure it well. I suspect, for example, that it may not have a straight frequency response - the differency between it and the previous amp were dramatic - like a 1-2 db drop in the irritation part of the spectrum - upper midrange, I guess. Usually that means less presence, but in this case it sounds like a lot more. Weird.

I certainly wouldn't judge any amplifier based on the sonics of Magnepan 1.6.