Power, Tube-like sound (nice sound, -musical) & LOOKS! They look gorgeous...

Lack of definition in the lowest frequenzies...
Crappy internal power-cords, see rewiew under for tweaks...

I really like these Monoblocks and can't imagine that I'll ever sell them...

My AW 180's have a diversity of upgrades (sonic and style);
The front of the amps are replaced with the old stone-plates.
The orange light is replaced with a blue one...
I have mounted attenuators at the amp's backside so that I can adjust the gain...
The transformers are replaced with the ones found in the bigger AW 250 and the powerbank (capasitors) is doubled.

I mentioned that the internal power-cord (& power print is crappy):
Open the amp and get rid of the power cord from socket to ON/OFF switch, replace this with a 4.5mm^2 solid core double isolated power cord.
Also get rid of the soft start circuitry...
The power print is tweaked with a 6mm^2 silver-cable that is mounted in parallel with the copper "tracks"...

The external power cord's are also replaced with thick 3*6mm^2 solid core cables, and I have mounted a filter (to get rid of noise/ripple).

These tweaks will give new life to your EC amps!

Similar Products Used:

Not to many; Yamaha Integrated (pre '85), Rotel RB1070, Cayin 251B...

Beautifly Build, Outstanding Performance, Plenty of Current and Power, capability to drive 0.5 Ohm speakers and very musical

none

I'm using this monster with Proceed Pre pre amp and it sound exelent and very musical. This amp will drive any speakers it very high in current > 100A. And powerfull 180 watts pure class A with very low THD level of 0.001% ahd a good frequence response for DVD A or SACD from DC-100KHz. I've Additioned a lot of other amps like Krell, Levinson and other high end amps but I found that EC is a very good value for money and can easy compite with Levinsons and KRELL wich are also very good but too expensive for what they are EC is not a cheap amp in my country it retails at aprox: US$ 6500.00 and I always wanted to buy it but wasn't sure if I wanted to spend that much money, but couple of month ago I went on the holidays to Bangkok and found a demo pair wich were running Wilson Audio Watt/Puppy 5.1 (exelent speakers) at KS World and as soon as I found out the price I bought them straight away and the boss in a shop was wery nice and helpfull person. AW 180 is a state-of-the-art components wich use to be used in record studios around the world for faithfull reproduction of the original master recording.
Highly Recomended.

Similar Products Used:

Krell, Mark Levinson, BAT, Audio Research

The AW180 with EC4.6 preamp is a seriously high end setupThey have the ability to deliver power with finese which is more than can be said for Krells.

Floor noise level is virtually zero, this was unbeliveable at first until I tried it with a friends Krell. No hum no hiss......and this isn't because of my supply, the Krells on the same line were hissing like a snake!

The only niggle I have is with the volume control in the preamp, it has a short life....though changing it cost no more than 3 cds

Overall this is about the best pre/poweramp you can get.
(it doesn't even cost much compared to high end stuff)
Miss it at you own loss. If there are 6 star products this is one

I use this fantastic amp together with EC 4.5 preamp and a pair of Quad ESL 63´s on Arcici stands and it performs absolutely wonderful. A very neutral sound with slam, dynamics and a realistic soundstage. Highly recommended!!