Cheap amp for my La Scalas?

[JRuss]

what the best amp i can get for a decent price. i'm a poor college student with no money and want to up grade my amp to something better but still afford to eat. currently running an old Technics sa-5270.

[ricktate]

I would get an HK430 reciever,,,clean the controls,,,put grippers on the Scalas if they are on hard smooth floor,,,,and enjoy baby......rick

[soundog]

See if you can find an old EICO HF-81 on ebay and refurbish it. There are a number of posts on this on this forum.

[Cal Blacksmith]

This was my reply on your other post "better quality from my computer"

it works here also.

"Over 7000 songs on your computer eh? They must be MP3s. Considering the degraded quality of the source compared to vinyl or even cds, a cheep way to go would be to get thee down to the salvation army, goodwill or even a pawn shop (pawn shops are notorious for charging near new prices though) and pick up late 70s receiver (real transistors in them things, not chips!) any good brand will do, Pioneer, Onkyo, Sansui etc. I am rather partial to the Yamaha sets. Connect the line out of the computer to the aux, tape or tuner inputs and your speakers to the speaker outputs and you will have just about the best sound that you can get out of an mp3. There will be many opinions about this but this is what I would do. This of course assumes a good quality signal from the sound card.

In my never humble opinion, the gear from the stereo wars era is better than the stuff on the mass marketing shelves today. Of course if you want the best sound, tubes are a great way to go if you dont mind the higher maintenance of the sets. An older un-rehabbed tube amp can be bought fairly cheep but you will need to invest in repairing it when the caps fail (which they will, I learned the hard way)

Good luck in your quest."

[Colin]

Since your system profile does NOT say what you have, how you use it and what your room is like, is hard to give a qualified, informed opinion.

[Ray Garrison]

What you're using now is an old, early generation Japanese solid state receiver, don't know wattage rating...

Our first question is how do you like the way your system sounds now? Have you tried hooking up a buddy's amp and heard better sound? Have you heard other La Scalas in other places that sounded better than yours? If so, better in what way? How much power does the Technics put out, and do you find it way overkill, a pretty good match, or lacking in power?

If you have the patience and inclination, this type of situation is where EBay shines. There is a *LOT* of vintage gear out there that (except for highly sought after "audiophile approved" units) trade for very reasonable money. Your receiver, for example, typically goes for about $20 on EBay.

The best amp I ever found for driving My La Scalas was (for reasons that totally escape me) an old, 1985 vintage Rotel RA850-BX2 integrated amp. I still have it. I liked it better than every other amp I tried, including a Krell (KAV300i), a Jolida, an NAD, several Adcoms and some other stuff. You can buy something from EBAy, try it, and if you don't like it, sell it on EBay for what you bought it for.

[sheltie dave]

Rick has a good idea - spend another $40 or less and pick up a Harman Kardon 430, 630, 730, or 930 that works well. Sal Army, estate sales, and EBay all have good examples. I had this setup in college...just don't spend too much time partying

[JohnA]

Any Yamaha CA-x00 or -x10. Try for a CA-800 or Ca-600.

http://search.ebay.com/ws/search/SaleSearch?from=R2&lopg=&query=yamaha+CA*&sapricehi=&sapricelo=&satitle=yamaha+CA*&socolumnlayout=3&sorecordsperpage=50&sosortorder=1&sosortproperty=1&sotr=2&sacategory=14970&catref=C12

The 800, at least, is switchable to Class A at 8 wpc. Warm and smooth, but not as solid in the bass as modern SS amps with mega damping factors; quite like tubes.

[Cal Blacksmith]

I have owned a CA-600 since new in 1977. It has been a great amp, I have only had to change the speaker fuses (my fault) and clean the pots. It is sitting on the shelf for now. I de-coupled the amp from the pre amp and was going to use the pre section to drive my tube amp, but I didn't like the sound as much as the tube pre I am using now. These are great units, quite expensive when new. Mine was $400 in 1977 dollars.

[chops]

The Technics SA-5270 was rated at 35 watts p/c.

I still have an old SA-5170 which is rated at 25 watts p/c. This reciever was originally bought by "jt1stcav", my bro, brand new years ago, I think around 1977 or 1978.

Once it was given to me in the mid 1980's, I started playing around with old raw driver laying around the house,(most of which were already blown!). They were both home and car speakers, and I would just hook them up to that reciever. Now remember, I was only 9 or 10 years old then and didn't exactly know what I was doing. Anyway, I just had those various drivers sitting on a couple shelves free-air, at who know's what impedance, and that reciever never gave up on me. Sure, I blew quite a few speaker fuses on it, but that's it. Hell for all I know, I could have been running that poor little thing into a 0.5 ohm load or something!! Ask my bro about it sometime, he'll tell you the crazy stuff I used to do with that thing!

Oh yeah, and the point behind this whole post of mine was to tell what the output power was of these recievers and how durable they are!