Wolcott amps The best tube amps?

Yes, I heard Wolcott's at the CES in Vegas a few weeks ago. Lucky for me, I had helped with the set up in a couple of rooms, and the Soundlab speakers (A1 and Millennium) were in rooms very near each other. What value is that? The Soundlab M1's were in the Purist Audio room, with Viva amps (same amp I am using) and the Soundlab A1's were with Hank Wolcott's amps. I went from room to room several times, and the Wolcott's are definitely one of the best amps I have ever heard (at least on Soundlab). I am getting the same Viva's used in Purist's room in about a week or so, when those are compared to my current Viva amps, I should know better where each one is in performance. I have two friends who use the Wolcott as their reference amp. One is on Crosby modified Quads and the other is a manufacturer who uses them on every speaker he owns. Both report that the Wolcott is their favorite.

I've heard the Wolcotts a few times including their demo at CES. I concur with Albert on the SoundLab+Wolcott room. It was one of the better sounding rooms of the whole show. But I must add that most rooms sounded pretty horrible so anything sounding half way decent would have stood out. The Wolcotts are good but if you're looking for the best you have to listen to one of Lamm Audio's tube amplifiers. Lamm makes the most musical, neutral and hamonically correct amplifiers in the world today. rgds, david k.

Dkarmeli, absolutely correct on bad sound at the CES. Just read my comments listed under the "Vandersteen 5" heading. Anyway, I did hear the Lamm Audio amps (the $30,000.00) ones, and they did sound great. I do not know what, if any, lesser priced Lamm's are available, but the Wolcott is only $8495.00 retail. Although both are expensive, the Wolcott is much more affordable to most people. Maybe there is a Lamm that is just as good a value? I only saw and heard the very expensive one.

Hi Albert, Lamm does have other less expensive models, but even then the cheapestn amp is about twice the price of the Wolcotts. But then again value is relative. Most people who've bought Lamms, do'nt see the need to ever change electronics again. If you consider the savings over just a couple of upgrades, you'll see that Lamms represent amazing value. Lamm is also an established company with a great track record. This cannot be said of Wolcott which kind of appeared overnight without any guarantee of it being around in a year from now. Unfortunately the same could be said of the designer. There is no manufacturing base for Wolcott, neither is there any real back up system. So that $8500 investment could be worth nothing overnight. rgds, david k.