Price Paid:  $0.00

Summary:
viscerally physical experience. Sensuality, power, a natural bass, adjectives are useless to describe what you feel when you listen through this amplifier. Certainly not the most distorsion free you can find, but it does not add anything; a bad record remains a bad one. But it is a NATURAL experience, not an electronic one. I use it with a Wadia, Maggies (small ones) and Magnan cables (i suspect those one play a good part in the organic experience). Four years that i am a happy man, after decades of graal quest.

Strengths:
Natural, physical

Weaknesses:
no

Summary:
After 2 years of trying, testing and sweating over which amp to invest in. I chose the 450 monoblocks from VTL. They can drive any large or small speaker and bring out the best in them. Scary goose bumps present on a regular basis. Casts a great huge 3d image with my VR4s. Solid bass not mushy at all. Vocals are clean and clear; very clear. Terrific with maggies (Iwant to hear the words) Has great sound in both triode and tetrode modes. Actually for some music I prefer tet, only for the most delicate music do I prefer the triode mode. In my opinion it is the best amp in its price range,(and I tried and tested many) it is not cheap but it is the last amp you'll ever need to own. There are some cap upgrades available down the road, when I need a new thrill but for the forseeable future I'm set.

Strengths:
authority, bottom end, slam, sweet and detail, power to spare

Weaknesses:
heat, biasing, heavy

Similar Products Used:
audio research VT100, D115, VTL 185, Ayre V3, Levinson 200 watt, Krell fbp300 etc etc