Amp Picks

[pathfindermwd]

Congrats on a nice purchase .... quite sure you'll enjoy yours as much as the rest of us do
...

>> couple of quirky things: when you power it off ..the light stays ON abt 10 seconds while the caps are draining, also mine makes a funny little fairy fart through one speaker when that cap finally empties.

On my 555, I found a CL ad : "dead amp..free to good home" and picked it up. main external fuse was OK , and then opened it a found 2 card fuses were blown ..they are standard size/amperage so its NBD to replace.

Was happy enough with it that went looking for an Adcom preamp ...their web site used to show the complete vintage products with specs/features ....I wanted a remote and when I discovered that they made pre's with FM tuners (gTp-xxx) , wanted that too ...the chart showed which to get , so went looking for a GTP-500 mk2 ....in a short time up popped one on CL ...they go between $75-150 ....on this ad an Orthodontist wanted $125.....when I called him , he asked if I wanted the "Adcom phase inverter" too ??

had NO idea what that was, but he gave me model number ...GDA-600 . Well, thats Adcoms DAC (it has a phase invert switch)....had no experience with a DAC , but negoed the price to $130 for BOTH.

had looked up the DAC and they sell $200-300 on eBay, but wasn't sure where to use it. Slightly earlier I had traded my cheapo L7's for a huge Sony Vaio laptop (19 inch RGB screen) and wasnt sure what to do with that either ....looked at the laptops specs and it has optical output on the audio ...SO, connected the laptop via mini-toslink to the DAC to my preamp to the 250Ti's .....a very smooth/warm sound ...everybody likes the combo ...Adcom seems to be good "bang for the buck" and has served me well so far..

Oh yeah...I was selling TT belts on CL ....one guy asked if I was open to trades ?? He needed 2 belts and a headshell ....he came over and traded an Adcom 5.1 amp in super condition (and its configurable to 2 channel) ..currently no place to use it..


Adcom GDA-600 DACs Reviews
http://www.audioreview.com/cat/digit...7_2738crx.aspx

here is a white 555 at abt the predicted price:
http://portland.craigslist.org/mlt/ele/2480138925.html

Thanks again! Sounds like you have found some good deals yourself! I will keep an eye out for the GDA's. There are 2 GDA 700's on ebay now for a lot of dough.

The Adcom stays on for about 20 seconds . Had to phone a friend about it, I had never seen an amp do that. I figured it was the caps, but thought there would be some kind of dump for them that must have been malfunctioning. Kind of prehistoric, lol!

A pre-amp is definitely next on the list!

[DavidF]

"...The Adcom stays on for about 20 seconds . Had to phone a friend about it, I had never seen an amp do that. I figured it was the caps, but thought there would be some kind of dump for them that must have been malfunctioning. Kind of prehistoric.."!

Not unusual with large caps in power supplies. Maybe you are used to amps (like with the NAD) with relays that cut output when the amp is powered down. The Adcom, for sonic integrity purposes, did not use relays to avoid another component in the circuit. There are other reasons in favor of relays but this is the way Adcom (and many others) chose to go. The 555II model which I have has bleeder resistors on the caps but still takes a while to discharge. So a good time to mention that there are high voltages in the circuits well after shut down... Should you have reason to open up the case.

[svollmer]

Thanks again! Sounds like you have found some good deals yourself! I will keep an eye out for the GDA's. There are 2 GDA 700's on ebay now for a lot of dough.

I've had a lot of Adcom amps (535, 535II, 545, 555, 555II, 565); loved them all and still have a few. I also have a GTP-760 Tuner/Preamp that I purchased new years ago. I'm told it has the same D/A converter as the GDA-700, but I'm not sure. All I can tell you from experience is that when I hooked the digital output of my CD player to the digital input of the GTP-760 and allowed it to do the D/A conversion (convertting?), it blew away the same preamp using the analog inputs as well as my GFP-555 and GFP-565 preamps in two-channel stereo. You can probably find a GTP-760 much cheaper than a GDA-700; primarily because its surround decoding is outdated. But, if I could spring for both the GDA-700 and a good preamp, I'd take that route for future flexibility.

Congrats on the 555!