Stereophile review- Fisher 500 C

The 500C is not going to sound incredible with energy hog and muffled/closed in sounding speakers, compared to todays offerings, like the early 60s vintage AR-3s. Many of the todays highly efficient speakers bass, midrange, tweeter speed is blindingly fast, open, and spacious compared to the AR-3/AR-3a days. Using the AR-3s with the Fisher 500C is like putting a cheap lense on a Hasselblad, you can still take a picture but the quality of the picture will be limited by the lense not the camera. Imagine how Ansel Adam's grand, crystaline clear landscapes pictures taken with large format film would look like if he took those pictures with a 1MB digital camera (http://www.anseladams.com/Yosemite-Special-Edition-Photographs-C110.aspx ). Get the Windex out and clean the fog on the window to what the 500C can do: leave the AR-3s in the garage and bring the 500C after cap replacements/routine maintainance into the main listening room.

I had a pair of Dynaco MK3's 60 watt tube monos,that had afew new parts put in and kept pace with an ARC Classic 60
Tube Amp.My audiophile friend and me couldn't tell them apart sonically it was a TOSS UP go figure.One was made in the late 50's the other in 1995.I think we've been duped!

Some vintage speakers are indeed rolled off. We measured a pair of Bozaks last week and there was not much above 10K. One trick you can do is to augment the top with a super tweeter.

Peter

Nanderson: I could bring the 500C inside and hook them up to my Magico 3's, but I don't think that I'd leave it installed for any amount of time.

Considering that I bought my 500C at a garage sale in mint condition for $20 about 25 to 30 years ago, I wouldn't sell it today just for the profit because it might cost more than $600 to get better sound in the garage system.

I'm pleased that you are happy with the Fisher, I am too, it just is not anything to get overly excited about, in my humble opinion. It is what it is ... a tube reciever.

As many know, including myself historically, dismissing something because of preconceived notions can be a costly endeaver in Audio. "Nothing to get overly excited about...", "great for a garage...", "I bought my 500C at a garage sale in mint condition for $20.." sound uncanningly like, but not necessarily so, what you see too much on venues like Audioreview.com where someone wants to be a spoiler without much truly critical thought given to a "review" even if the reviewer actually has listened to what they say they are reviewing. Another potential motivation of similar comments I and countless high-end dealers have seen over the last 40 years is a need to justify spending way too much on audio so some folks spend time putting down less expensive alternatives. Somehow both seem less than geniune or at least they don't seem to be. But this is afterall just a matter of taste and just like being at a salad bar making a salad when someone comes up and tells you "hey, you are not going to like that salad because I (pointing at his/her salad) like mine this way". Why, I often wonder, can not people see that audio equipment sound taste is at least as subjective as palate taste and as such not be so dismissive of anothers "salad". The Fisher 500C gets so much right for so little that rarely does solid state do. When I feel deeply moved emotionally, (my Hovland HP-100 preamp contributed to this sense of awareness in spades), by the music played through audio equipment I know I am listening to a synergy of equipment that is doing what the point of music is suppose to be about: Connection.