Love your moniker, Fangio....
I remember when those amps came out. At the time, the slew rate spec was all the rage in the US market. I can see from the literature that it was all over the HK marketing department at the time. I'm sure some updates of old components will bring it back to its original performance specs.
At the time this came out, I had an HK Citation V (35wpc) tube amp and lusted after one of the 16s. They carried on the tradition of almost mil-spec build quality but they found it hard to compete with the Crown DC-300s and Phase Linear 400s that were much more competitively priced and had better distribution channels throughout most of the US dealer market. Of course, the Japanese manufacturers were also taking a big bite out of the higher-end separate market by the time the Citation 16 hit the market. As a result, I'm not surprised that this model has been almost forgotten after almost 30 years.
Cheers,
David
Citation Citation 16 a (upgraded)
Hello Fangio,
I am the owner of a HK Cit.16a since 1978 and i still like the looks and sound of this marvellous machine. But i have to be true....................i like it much better since the machine was totally upgraded wayback in 1990. It costed some 40 hours of labour to replace every inferior component. There were even some knowingly mistakes in the concept to achieve a cheaper productionprocess. The used components were the best to be found in militairy manuals. F.i. longlife Siemens capacitors for the powersupply. These capicitors were brought on 60 volts little by little in some 12 days (5 volts each day) to avoid damage when using the HK for the very first time after having it upgraded. The signalcables were made from silver with a teflon coating (also used in a F16 jet). In the past the HK was used on the mid-and high section of a pair of Infinity Q2 loudspeakers and the sound was just great. It sounded if a curtain had been opened after upgrading the HK. I still have all the manuals and the alterations that were made to upgrade the amp. When the DC offset was measured after some 4 years it pointed out nothing had changed and the values were exactly the same. I can adjust the DC offset without opening the amp's enclosure. Maybe a warning for users of this beautiful amp. Before using the amp give it one hour to warm up and to reach its maximum settings for it would be a real loss when blowing up one of the powertransistors. As far as i am informed these are matched types and in case of any loss you can't buy them anymore.
With kind regards,
Jan Slagman
The Netherlands
Harman Kardon Citation 16a (upgraded version)
Hello Fangio,
When upgrading your Harman Kardon Citation 16a you better disable the peak-reading light emitting diode display. That feature makes no sense and it only asks needles energy from the power-supply. I just cut it off and i made a volumecontrol out of the selectorknob in question. I placed a Noble potentiometer. Now i have a Marantz CD-94 MkII and a Marantz CDA-94 digital converter (upgraded by Siltech) directly coupled to the input of the Harman Kardon Citation 16a. This was done to avoid a pre-amplifier (with a lot of components in it). Well to be short: "It just sounds very tight and transparent" and i have heard the Citation beaten competitors with big names. By the way you better replace the original relais by a Zettler relais.
If you have any questions, please drop me a line !
With kind regards,
Jan Slagman
The Neterlands