The Bob Carver Challenge

No.
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Here is the Silver Seven statement valve amp that Bob Carver built:



Dual mono - two chassis per channel.

And here is the Transistor amp he built that was supposed to sound exactly the same:



Also dual mono.

 

It would be great to get those amps together today.

I heard an amplifier (solid state) designed from the ground up to sound just like a 300b amp about a year ago.

It sounded good, but absolutely nothing like a valve amp.

I've heard countless others supposedly offering ''valve like mid-range'' or similar - and they never, ever do..

 

Of course not. 'unlistenable' meaning here that no-one would want to pay that sort of money for having the sort of sound the Cyrus/Quad pair emitted, not when the Quad/Quad pair sounded significantly better.

 

i just love the idea that people think mid season Quad has no sound, how much more warmed over could the 3 -00 stuff sound.

 

I think Simon was refering to 34/44 pre and the current dumping amps.
Many of my needledrops come from a 34 with internal MC card. Interestingly, many people describe them as crisp and brightly-lit but of course I seldom include information on what pre/phono stage was used. Go work it out.

That range of amps sound neutral enough if you ignore the internet chatter and actually listen.

The older models are more tightly bandwidth limited and I would expect them to stand out a little in a blind test depending on the material being played and the top end ability of the speaker system, but context is still required.
The differences are still less than those (in terms of balance) between many good modern phono cartridges, for example.

To understand why, you need to look at what causes 'warming over'.
It is in fact due to effects much further down the frequency range, or high levels of distortion. Lots of 2nd harmonic sounds warm and fuzzy but that isn't the issue here.
The older Quads are a couple of dB down at 20khz but still flat over the broad range from 30hz-15khz. That ensures basic tonal balance stays correct since there isn't an awful lot of musically important information at the very top end.
You'll get a little reduction in air an openness perhaps but that's all.

You can escalate that effect and call it 'warming over' if you wish, I wouldn't.