Vintage receivers vs. portable amps - Page 2

Be careful, there have been some who have sold higher end solid state headphone amps after having a taste of what vintage receivers and integrateds can do. I know of one member who sold a wa22 after getting a vintage tube integrated. He told me it didn't sound better than the woo, but it was close enough that it didn't make sense to keep it. The wa22 is a 2000.00 tube headphone amp. Not all are great, but many are. Each brand has their own sound signature, so keep that in mind. But most brands from that era produced some really great sounding gear. And the fact that after more than thirty years, that many are still highly sought after, is a testament to their build quality. They just don't make them like that anymore. Only the multi-thousand dollar modern gear has that kind of build quality. You won't find a cheap or generic part anywhere inside a good vintage piece. Even the cheap budget ones use high quality parts, but just on a much smaller scale.

With vintage equipment, you may have to replace the power supply caps in them.

You have to take a look at bias and DC-offset settings as well, for this reason it's good to go for a unit with a service manual included or available online.

that depends. lot of good quality modern power amps(especially from Krell) you can score under 1000 in the used market but i do agree they don't make them like they use to cause of the the audio war in the 70's and 80's. i haven't found any modern amp that can outclass a legendary 1980's Yamaha MX-10000 which can drive up to 1200w of real watts into a 1ohm load. it's even capable of pushing pair of Apogee Scintilla 1ohm speakers to the max and capable of blowing them.

I would only consider a stereo receiver/amp over a dedicated headphone amp if I knew I was going to use it with higher impedance phones. Before the DAP became an acceptable source (granted, thats a broad statement, but bear with me), the output impedance on the headphone out was built around older headphone designs - happy to hear that manufacturers have seen the light re 32-ohms and below, high-sensitivity headphones.