Carver Pro ZR1600

Sean...About the Carver Pro line of products being unrelated to Bob..yes I heard that. For what it's worth, the amps have a "made in USA" label on them, which makes them sound just a little bit better. This Phoenix Gold outfit confuses the hell out of me, it seems like some kind of umbrella company for several brands. I have some interconnects by them which appear to have all the features of other brands except the price.

6X600 wpc @4ohms...$2500. Some other manufacturers have a lot of catching up to do.

I hear Phoenix Gold and i automatically think of car audio. They use to put out some killer car amps in late 80's early 90's.
Glad to hear your liking your new amps Eldartford. Are you going to give us a full review sometime? Also some comparisons to your adcoms and other amps you have auditioned? From your comments so far sounds like alot of bang for the buck. Still curious if it will walk all over aragons or if i still wait for the next new amp to come out.

The Carver Pro Amps are being modded by many with excellent results. There have been many threads discussing the Carvers on Audiocircles. I have listened to the 1600 before and after modification by a local modder, and I must confess the difference was dramatic. Bass and treble were extended after modification. Soundstage and clarity also improved.

Tayfiji,

Can you tell us what mods were done to your friends's ZR? I am about to look in to this matter for my own ZR1000

Dmason...One mod that I heard described pretty much amounted to bypassing the input signal processing (Level controls, high pass filters, clipping management, amplification configuration, etc) replacing the fan with one that is more quiet, and changing the input and output connectors to a different type.

My thoughts about this are that the fan is a good idea, and the rest of it can wait until I get things sorted out. The input and output terminals are just fine IMHO. I use bare wire clamped into the terminals for output, and converting to RCA plug input is a matter of two gold plated adapter plugs for a grand total of $3.60. At the input there is a 0.47 mfd capacitor in the signal path that might be upgradeable, and running a straight wire around the input circuitry is like chicken soup. However the various features of the circuit are individually bypassable with switches, so we really are talking about the difference between circuit board runs and switch contacts and unbroken copper wire (and that discussion could become long and heated). I don't think that anyone knows enough about the digital power amplification circuitry to justify messing with it. In summary, I think that this amp does not particularly lend itself to useful mods, and I would need to have a detailed description of the mod before I would go for it. The fan change, capacitor, and bypass wire are simple enough to do oneself.

If there is someone out there who can shed more light on the mod details, please chime in.