It's loud, bridgeable. Runs very cool. Sleep mode is great.

It's heavy. Loud pops when the unit is powered up.

So far so good, sounds great matched with B&K Ref20 and Klipsch RF-3 and SS.5 surrounds.
Loud pops when firing it up are annoying, but it is so cool in sleep mode I might just leave it on all the time. I don't know why you would need the 3.5mm trigger since it's triggered out of sleep by input anyway. Only nit would be that the left and right speaker connects are on the opposite sides of the unit from where the speakers are in the room if you are facing the 5/1500. Maybe real audiophilles have their equipment in racks behind the listeners?

Musical, transparent, gobs and gobs of power

None.

I first purchased a used 5/1500 which had actually started life as a 3/900 and had some problems: it wouldn't shut itself off in the absence of an input signal and it emitted a mind-numbing hum from the transformers.

I sent an email to Sherbourn requesting help and the next day who should call but one of the FOUNDERS of the company (Ron Fone)! Very concerned with the problems I had reported, Mr. Fone suggested I send the unit in for service at no cost.

After picking my jaw off the floor I shipped the unit back to Sherbourn. In just a week or two they shipped the unit back to my dealer (for safety since I was out of town for work). My dealer, not to be outdone, took the refurbished unit and swapped it for a new model.

The performance of the 5/1500 is almost as stunning as the service from Sherbourn. Transparent, even musical, this is a fabuluous amp. Very lively, with endless power and fearless delivery of even the most difficult material.

Note that the newest model features only one cool blue LED - much less distracting in a darkened room. Though I miss watching them click on, one-by-one, when powering up.

A great product, even if it didn't have the backing of great service.

Similar Products Used:

Sherwood

Great power and presentation. Seems to do as well with movies as music

Slight hum, and low level pop when it comes on line, but power is no the best in the world and it may be the real problem.

This is a beast of an amp. Trust me I have had a heating pad on my back for a week now after moving it into place. Great build quality and a thoughtful design. Docs are a little week but its an amp so this should not be a big problem for most. Binding posts, and the layout of connections in well done and well marked.

As to the sound let me just say, I picked up speakers that most folks would want in a two channel system, the Alon Mk II's. They dip to 4 ohms, and frankly are not the most efficient speakers on the market. Not the best match for Home Theater, and I have been paying a price for it ever since. I have an SR-18 and while it can certainly drive the system, its always been a bit muddy and bass shy, my guess is both pure power and the load being a problem for the all in one Marantz.

All that ended the moment I hooked up the Sherbourn. This thing has the power it takes to drive the Alon's and that was before I bridged it over. For music the amp is sweet and stable, no swings in resolution as the volume goes up, no obvious shift in sound quality or even a sign of strain when you drive the system hard.

For theater it is simply amazing. Voices (male/female) are clear and easy to understand. Pan front to back is outstanding and special effects...... well I had mixed feelings about how much power I really needed until I put this thing online.

I have listened to a number of 5 channel amps over the last year or so and had always thought I would buy a high end two channle for music and leave the rest to the marantz. This amp changed my mind forever about what can be done with home theater, and at a price well below 2k.

Main system
Marantz Sr-18
Sherbourn 5/1500
Alon mk II front left/right center
BA rear
Sony s7700 DVD

Again, if you listen to as much music and you do video, and are a bit put off by the prices in the home theater market, this is one of those rear products that can let you have the best of both worlds. After nearly three years of playing in the Home theater space, I finally, don't need to run back to the listening room everytime I really want some decent music. I can't give any product a higher rating then that.

Similar Products Used:

None

Excellent, clean power. Build quality. Separate power supplies for each channel. Very reasonable price.

Blue indicator lights very bright in a dark room (small personal gripe)

I have always been an avid two-channel stereo fan, but was in the market to purchase home theater equipment. I didn't want to spend a massive amount of money, but I knew that I didn't want to purchase a receiver and wanted separates components.
I originally read about the Sherbourn 5/1500 and after becoming interested in the specs searched for a local dealer. When I heard the dealer's system with this amp, I quickly realized that this was the amp I wanted. At that price there was nothing that could touch it.
After setting up the Sherbourn amp in my living room with the rest of my system (Golden Theater GTX-1, Thiel CS2 main speakers, B&W center and surrounds, Pioneer DV-414, Cal Audio Labs CD transport, Atlantic Technology 272 PBM sub), I knew that I had made the correct decision. Watching movies on DVD is unbelievable and listening to CD's is equally amazing, both with great clarity and depth at any volume. I highly recommend this amplifier.

Similar Products Used:

Adcom, Parasound

Very powerful and runs cool.

NONE

I have had this amp for almost 6 months now and I am VERY happy with it.I really do not understand the review from Neville who said it ran HOT and it humed loud.Everything he said is the complete opposite of what I have experienced.Then again,I own it and have had time to put it through the paces.Anyway I run this amp with 4ohm speakers for over 2 hours straight and it is warm afterward.NOT HOT.I strongly recommend that you listen to this before buying a 5 channel amp.

Similar Products Used:

ATI 1505

I got my Sherbourn amp 3 weeks ago from Stereo Trading Outlet in Jenkintown, PA. The improvement (along with my new Sherwood pre/pro) over my old Denon AVR-1400 with Technics DD decoder is night and day. Of course, it should be considering the price difference :)
The first thing I noticed was how much tighter the bass is with this setup. I listen to a lot of trip-hop, industrial, techno, etc., and my speakers would boom like crazy with the receiver. Now the bass is totally integrated with the rest of the music. I'm also hearing so much more detail than before, without any annoying brightness. My fiance' can't stop listening to her Sheryl Crow and Garbage CDs, commenting that the differences are astounding.

I got the Sherwood/Sherbourn combo for around $2500 from my local dealer. Between them I've got DD, DTS, 6-channel inputs for the future, and 200 wpc. The sound was noticably better than the top-of-the-line receivers in the same price range, and the amp especially blew away the Adcom and Sherwood amps I compared it to. The Parasound HCA-1205 sounded good too, but I thought the Sherbourn was a little better and had more power. Plus, it looks very cool, which made it an easier sell to my fiance'.

I would buy this again in a heartbeat.

Associated equipment:

Sherwood AVP-9080 pre/pro
Panasonic DVD-A110 DVD Player
Yamaha CDM-900 CD Jukebox (digital out to Sherwood's DACs)
Pioneer CDR-555RW CD Recorder
Paradigm Studio 80 mains with CC-450 center and atom rears.
Audioquest and Monster Cable Interconnects and Speaker Wires.

I purchased this amp a couple months ago and I am glad I did. I am a big home theater enthusiast, but I also have a nice music collection on CD, including several discs from audiophile labels (Sheffield Labs, Chesky Records). I have an extensive movie collection on Laser Disc and DVD. I have two complete Dolby Digital systems. One is reciever based with an Onkyo reciever. My main system consists of a Lexicon DC1 pre-pro (THX, Dolby Digital Model), all M&K speaker system (S-100B LCR speakers, SS-500thx Dipole side speakers, S-3B rear speakers and an MX-100 Subwoofer) and of course, the Sherbourn 5/1500 amp.
This amp is a five channel amp rated at 200 watts per channel at 8 ohms and 300 watts per channel at 4 ohms. A test report I read, however, showed that it produced close to 400 watts into 4 ohms. All my speakers are 4 ohm speakers. I could not ask for any more power at anywhere near this price. Besides, who really needs more power than that. This amp is built like a tank. It weighs 82 pounds. Each channel has it's own torroidal transformer, power supply, so it is basically five completely separate monoblock amplifiers built on the same chasis. It has large heat sinks and a very efficient design, so it does not need a noisy cooling fan. It actually runs quite cool, which is hard to believe with thhis much power and no fan. Four of the channels can be bridged for 400 watts at 8 ohms and 600 watts at 4 ohms. Each channel has a switch to turn on a soft clipping feature to protect your speakers if the amp is pushed to the point that it clips. With this much power, you would probably be deaf at that point. Each channel has a blue indicator light on the front panel that shows the channel is on and flashes if the channel clips. The amp can be left on all the time because it senses a signal and turns itself on when there is a signal and turns itself off when there is no signal. The blue indicator lights turn bright when the amp turns it's power section off and dim when it senses a signal and turns back on.

This amp sounds wonderful. I had always planned to buy a Krell KAV 500 amp. The 5/1500 sounds as good as the KAV 500, has twice the power and costs one third the amount that the KAV 500 costs. This purchase decision was a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned.

I don't think you can find this great sound, this much power, at this low price anywhere else. Buy one, you won't be disappointed.

Huge amounts of clean power, balanced inputs, auto on/off

none at all

I can't believe that up to this point not much has been said about this incredible amplifier! I am using the newer model 5/1500A, with which Sherbourn corrected almost every problem people listed in the previous 14 reviews! Unfortunately Audioreview hasn't added a 5/1500A review section, so I'll have to use the older 5/1500 section to bring ya'll up to speed. Here are some of those old problems people had with the 5/1500, and what's different now with the 5/1500A) :

(12/27/00) Reviewer wrote, "Front LEDs are too bright and may be distracting while watching movies in dark room."
Fix: There used to be five blue LED's and now there is just one - problem solved.

(12/27/00) Reviewer wrote, "Very small transformer hum while sitting in standby or idle mode."
Fix: No hum whatsoever with the 5/1500A. Dead silent all the time.

(12/27/00) Reviewer wrote, "Signal triggering from the source causes a small pop noise that can be heard all across 5 speakers in h/t setup."
Fix: No more popping noise. Simple as that.

(12/5/00) Reviewer wrote, "Slight hum, and low level pop when it comes on line."
Fix: Again, TOTALLY silent, ALL the time.

Most of the complaints of the first 14 reviews have been about humming, popping, or the 5 blue LED's. All of those problems were fixed with the 5/1500A.

All I can say personally is that owning this amp has been nothing but a pleasure from the beginning. First of all Ron Fone (one of the founders of Sherbourn) has helped me a number of times personally with purchasing the amp, and then with questions I had post-purchase. The company has been nothing but prompt and kind to answer all of my questions. Second, the amp itself is completely amazing. In case you are unaware, it is built exactly like a Bryston 9B-ST (THX), 5 mono amps in a single chassis all with independent power supplies. The difference is that the Sherbourn now sells for $1,750, whereas the Bryston sells for around $3,500. Sure, the Bryston comes with a 20 year warranty, but is that really worth paying twice as much? I'm not trying to sound like a salesman, but my experience working with Sherbourn and using the 5/1500A amplifier has been nothing but fantastic from the beginning, and I want to make more people aware of how great this relatively new company is. For more info, read about the 5/1500A at www.sherbourn.com. Also, email me if you have any questions about the amp or my setup.

MY SETUP:

Paradigm Reference Studio 100v2's (main speakers)
Sherbourn 5/1500A (amplifier)
Morrison ELAD (pre-amplifier)
Yamaha CDC-685 (CD Player)

Follow up review

This is a follow up to my first review, and is response to a bit of a problem I had with the amp. In short, the auto turn off began failing about 3 months ago.... No big deal I thought as I like the amp warm anyway. About 2 months ago I noticed that the amp was turning off in a random manner. Its on all the time, then all of a sudden its off. Finally, about 6 weeks ago, the amp is on but only four channels are running. Two days later all five channels are back. I sent the amp back for repair and sure enough the auto sense for turn on off needed to be replaced.

Stuff happens, and the amp is now back and running like a champ. One thing I noticed after I got the amp back is that I now have the hum, others have talked about. Its loud and hard to ignore. At first I thought of putting the amp in the basement below my living room, but the thought of all the wire runs ect really did not appeal. I played around a bit and found that the shelf and the amp seemed to be interacting to a great degree, and or the case was a bit loose. I locked down all the screws, (no go) I still had the hum.

If you got the hum, here's the quick cheap fix. Cut up an old mouse pad. If you don't have one hit the store, it will cost you about a buck. Place it under the legs of the amp and all will be well.

This is a great amp, even if it needs a bit of care. The repair may not have been as quick as I would like, but it did get fixed and did not cost me a cent. Can't ask for much more then that.

I have had this amp. for a month now and it is AWESOME.I`m running it through my Yamaha 2092 and the difference between the amps was night and day.I hear things now that could`nt with the Yamaha amps.I have the Legacy 1`s as mains and the Legacy Silver Screen Center,Paradigm Mini Monitors front effects and soon to be replaced Polk lsfx rears and the Mirage BPS-400 sub.The Legacy`s are 4ohm and the rest are 8ohm.It drives these speakers easily with ALOT of power to spare.It`s rated at 200wpc into 8ohms and 300wpc into 4 ohms and is also bridgeable.For the power,sound and flexability and most important PRICE.There is no other amp except for the ATI which is less powerful that can match it.HIGHLY RECOMMENDED