Altec 7180a Amp?

[Geekstar]

seems that 'a sort of irony' is present ...

Ironic that I started this thread and I was in Korea while the discussion continued. Got back last night.

The amp was made in USA c. 1996. Quite solidly put together. I fired it up on a "disposable" pair of JBL bookshelf speakers I found at a thrift shop for $15.

The amp sounded "good" but perhaps not what I would want for hi-fi compared to say my 300B amp. I'll bet it sure can play loud though.

[Audio_by_Goodwill]

Ironic that I started this thread and I was in Korea

I see.

The amp sounded "good" but perhaps not what I would want for hi-fi compared to say my 300B amp. I'll bet it sure can play loud though.

Comparing a solid state commercial amp with a 300B tube amp seems like comparing apples and fish to me........ maybe not, as I don't know a whole lot about tubes.

[Geekstar]

Yeah, pretty much apples to fish. The big amp seemed less detailed, more electronic sounding, much more colored....but this is a very clean and detailed "sophisticated" tube amp. I can imagine some mediocre vintage tube amps sounding less detailed and more colored than the 500W Altec.

The thing that scared me is that the Altec sounded like it could blow the cones right out of the JBL bookshelf speakers on a loud transient, as it most certainly could if I cranked it up.

I have always run Altec horns with tubes for domestic use but there is a group of Altec fans in Japan who love to use big Altec SS amps on VOTs and similar. I saw a Japanese blog where a guy carefully restored a set of 210 cabs then bought a set of huge Altec amps that had stickers on them from the motor speedway they were surplussed out of! Dang, that must be loud!