Anyone here using a vintage amp?

The specs are of no importance; it's how it sounds to you. If it sounds good, don't let anyone tell you you should be dissatisfied and looking for better. There are many fine integrated amps that will drive phones like the 595 just fine.

 

PS: I think I may have owned that exact combination at one time when I was doing a lot of trading on Ebay.

 

PPS: An amp is not a "source". That would be a CD player or computer or whatever.

i picked up a nad c300 for £20 a few days back, it needs some love (replacing many caps and some resistors) but it sounds great even as is.  i certainly hope it can drive my hd555 (hd595) :P

 

the deal with most integrateds is they pass the speaker signal though some resistors, 220ohm 2w types or whatever, and feed headphones with that.  I recall a while ago posting some stuff in regards to the claims that integrateds use opamps/a cheapo cmoy type arrangement for their headphones - it had me opening all my amps to find out - as it seemed to be all the rage to bash integrated headphone outs, but it's just not true in the case of every integrated i've opened (sony, yamaha, nad, cambridge, audiolab, etc).

You may recall a couple of threads where this issue was hotly debated. To settle it, some enterprising soul emailed as many manufacturers as possible to ask how their HP jacks were powered--from op amps or through resistors off the main amps. The answer in almost every case was the latter, one of the few exceptions being NAD but only with their higher end stuff (Cambridge ditto).

So the issue was finally settled, but that doesn't stop people from posting that all integrated HP jacks are powered by cheap op amps, then getting uppity when they're contradicted. Many very fiery threads have arisen from this issue, and I've been in all of them. My clothes and hair are singed all over.      

"Also, how did you like that setup for yourself? "

 

Ha! If you knew how much trading I've done on Ebay you wouldn't ask that question! Enough to say that I don't remember it as being any worse than any of the other combinations I've had, using mostly Marantz and Rotel amps. Sony made pretty good stuff back then, when they actually cared about sound quality and when sound quality actually sold amps, as opposed to how many ipods you could plug into it. It was a different era.  

In respect to your question, I think once a month since the beginning of Head-fi, we get a vintage amp question. You have the freedom to us the search engine. It is an excellent question though and yes there are good vintage amps from the 70s.

 

 

I  have two sansui integateds: the au505 and the au555a which both sound very tubey. I purchased a sansui receiver the other day:  the g3000 (gorgeous looking animal with plenty of power: 40 watts per channel of real 70s watts). Hasn't been delivered yet, but I have high hopes!