Audio Research Vs115

I now live in fear of my Jolida being destroyed by a tube arc...not likely to happen, but still...also, is this all stemming from the fact that ARC and "arc" are the same letter grouping? Coincidence? hmm...I smell a conspiracy...or my tubes melting...or something

Sorry Don, there are a lot of amps which will take out a resistor in the bias circuit when a power tube blows. ARC has a lot of company, including I suspect some of those you mentioned. But I agree it is a PITA especially when you aren't handy with a soldering iron. Usually it is simple to replace the resistor.

BTW, since you have stated that it is a "poor" design choice, what design would be preferred, and how would its utilization affect the performance of the amp? I suspect that designers may have concluded that using the resistor as a fuse was a preferred solution as opposed to inserting a fuse in the bias loop. But I'm not a designer.....

Smatsui, I'm sorry to read about your troubles. It's hard for me to react to your situation, other than I'm glad you found an amp that suits your needs.

Just a couple of responses to your last post. Yes, the power tranny does get quite warm, but that is normal for the VS-115. As far as humming is concerned, I wonder out loud if what you heard was the power caps charging. I've heard humming too at start up, but it goes away pretty quickly after warm up. Perhaps Gary (Hifigeek1) could add another comment or so to put your observations into perspective.

There are no reliability issues with that amp that I am aware of.

My VS115 is one of the earlier ones with the 6550's. At some point I will upgrade the tubes to KT120's. I've also blown one of the resistors in the amp. I ended up replacing the resistor myself--it's a 10 minute job if you know how to solder. Apparently this is a common problem.

Other than that, I love this amp. When I put it in my system, it totally changed the sound of my system in the area of midrange accuracy, imaging, and 3-dimensional soundstaging. I was using Classe solid state electronics before.

Compared to some tube amps, this is a very wideband amp. With laboratory test equipment I have measured its frequency response into an actual loudspeaker load as flat out to 20 kHz and -3 dB at 50 kHz. This probably helps account for why this amp does not sound rolled off in the highs and has very good detail.

I also have an LS-27 and Reference CD-7, so you can see I am sold on ARC.