Belles 350A

Glad to hear you like the amp. I have been using one for about a year with my Vandersteen 3A Signatures. I have praised it here in this forum but it has fallen on pretty much closed ears.
I have never heard any solid state amp that I thought sounded better than this amp overall and I have heard most of them.
When Doug Blackburn wrote his review in Soundstage, I knew I had to try it since he was using the same equipment as myself. It was an unbelievable glowing review but you know what, it was right on the money. This is one hell of an amp.
Why it hasn't received more publicity is beyond me. Maybe it needed to be priced at about $10,000 to catch the attention of the rest of the world!
Read the review at www.sounstage.com in the archives. That sums it up quite nicely.

This amp is in the same league as BEL, (Brown Electronics Lab) one of the best amps ever. I think it is only because of the cosmetics (which are fine by most standards) and the fact that it is way to cheap that it gets no attention. People want to feel like they just bought the best sounding,most expensive and coolest looking amp in the world -EGO, and this amp cannot deliver that- just some of the best musicality period. It's only flaw is a less three dimentional portrayal only compared to tubes. I also compared it to some vtl's and it plain just killed them in musical enjoyment. Realy no contest.

As good as the 350 is, the new 150 Reference is even better if you don't need 250wpc.

I tried a 350A with my Proac 3.8's for a while. Of the amps I've used with these speakers, Classe CA200, Audio Research 100.2, Rouge M150, The Belles was the one I liked the least. It had a very forward presentation in my system.

Mikeyaya, David Belles will tell you of a simple tweak if your unit is more than a year old....makes a big difference....I have a 150A Reference and it doubles as a stereo or monobloc amp. It will be superior when I mate it with another! Welcome aboard! His 21A preamp, with a few simple tweaks, is also a winner :-)

Care to let us in on these "tweaks"?

It envolves removing 4 capacitors in the amp that allow it to become much more transparent. I don't remember the c- numbers but the are fairly large sausage looking caps near the input end each of the circuit boards(2 caps to the board) You simply cut them out. You can call Belles and he will tell you if your amps serial number envolves this tweak. It works pretty good. Amps coming from Belles over the last year will already be done.