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|   What should I do, need your Help.... | nick4433
Aug 15, 2001 9:31 AM | | A good friend of mine is leaving this country for good and is in the process of selling his Stereo/HT gear. He has a Carver Amp which I believe is 150W X 5 channels 8 Ohms. He is willing to sell it to me for $700 or so.
I was thinking if I should buy this amp and use the 2802 as a pre/pro and use my Denon AVR-3000 to amplify the Back 2 speakers and sell my 3801. In that case, what should I sell my 3801 for, which is barely 3 months old? I have purchased it from an Authorized dealers and has the full 2 year warranty and all original materials with it.
Or, should I just stay put with the 3801? HELP! |
| re: What should I do, need your Help.... | NeedHelp
Aug 15, 2001 11:41 AM | | The factory warranty through denon is ONLY good to the original purchaser. SO if you sold it, the person buying it would have no warranty at all. They 3801 is a good reciever, but i don't know about the other equipment, so someone else will have to help you out there. |
| re: What should I do, need your Help.... | Josh Studrawa
Aug 15, 2001 1:01 PM | | Is the 3801 good enough for you? Do you have $700 right now (not sure how long it'd take to sell the 3801)? Do you need to upgrade right now? Is the Carver an upgrade?
Lots of questions, and only you know the answers. Sorry, but this one's your call, bro. |
| Main question is... | nick4433
Aug 15, 2001 1:19 PM | | Does the Carver offer anything substantially different in terms of amplification? If it does then i will spend the cash and go for the swap.
I still love the 3801 though, damn, I hate it when these situations come up. |
| re: I would keep my Denon | Kirit
Aug 15, 2001 4:55 PM | | If I was in your place, I would rather keep the Denon 3801. If you sell 3801 now you may not get even 600 (if someone is buying from your post he will have to pay shipping).
If you really want to buy the Carver then sell your Denon first and then buy Carver.
All the best
Kirit |
| re: What should I do, need your Help.... | Adam
Aug 15, 2001 5:07 PM | | I would grab the Carver so you can sell that to me :) What model is it? The 805x perhaps. The Carver amp if it is that model is just too much. I have seen the 806x which is 6 channels going for 650.00. I realize he is a friend but being fair and being silly are two different things.
Personally I say stick witht he 3801 and be happy :) If you want to pick up the Carver Amp you can't go wrong. The Carver products are freaking beasts. |
| re: What should I do, need your Help.... | Woochifer
Aug 15, 2001 8:33 PM | | If you're happy with what you got, be happy. If the upgrade bug's bitten you, then scratch it, but check with your credit card company first. I kinda liken your dilemma to the bumper sticker I occasionally see on old clunker cars, "It's Ugly, But It's Paid Off" Not to say that the 3801 is a clunker, but you get the point!
With the Carver, I have no info whatsoever on the model in question, but I would check the back of the unit for a UL symbol. The UL test bench was not a friendly place for Carver's Magnetic Field creations from the late-80s. |
| re: What should I do, need your Help.... | Adam
Aug 16, 2001 6:36 AM | | I've seen you make this remark twice. Can you elaborate on this UL test? Thanks. |
| re: What should I do, need your Help.... | Woochifer
Aug 16, 2001 11:49 AM | | This dates back to the late-80s when Carver made that 200 (?) wpc cube-shaped amp. Even though audiophiles were divided on its sound quality, the amp weighed less than 20 lbs. and ran totally cool. The UL test story was relayed onto me by a friend who worked at a stereo store in southern California that sold Carver equipment. He said that his company's stores in L.A. County had to pull all of the Carver amps off the shelves because (at least at that time) the local fire regulations required that all consumer electronics sold in the county be UL listed. His story was that the Carver cube amp exploded on the UL test bench. Since he sold Carver amps (and because his store was not in L.A. County, they actually got some extra customers crossing the county line to buy Carvers) and I'd been friends with him since high school, I don't think he had reason to make this up.
The design in question was the amp series with the so called Magnetic Field technology. I'm no electronics expert, but from what I understand this design eliminated a lot of the heavy and heat-producing power reserve circuitry. This philosophy is basically the opposite of NAD's approach (and I believe Harman/Kardon) which has lower continuous power output, but high dynamic power for peak loads. The Carver approach is all well and good until you realize that all of the peak power has to pretty much come directly from the wall socket. I'm guessing that under some of UL's more demanding safety tests, that type of design would not fare very well when operating under peak loads.
Actually, I think that Carver made a very good recovery from that fiasco, ironically by designing equipment with an almost opposite design approach. They produced some very well-regarded hybrid monoblock amps (that required substantial warm-up time and weighed a ton), one of the first CD players I remember that incorporated vacuum tubes into the output stage, and an excellent ribbon speaker that at least one high-end reviewer still uses in his reference system. I have zero info on Carver's more recent designs (I know they declared bankruptcy and Bob Carver left the company to start up Sunfire, but that's about it), so for all I know, those infamous Magnetic Field amps have been long retired.
I just like to bring this up from time to time because I actually find humor in it, and it demonstrates how a lot of "revolutionary" audio concepts can have their pitfalls. BTW, those Sunfire amps have some eerily similar claims attached to them -- high power, cool to the touch, etc. -- AND the technology's got that snazzy Tracking Downcoverter name. Hmmm ... |
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