Bob Carver Crimson 275 Power Amp: $2750 (75×2, 7h, 14w, 9.5d, 19 lbs)

The new Bob Carver Crimson 275 tube power amp is now here! It is made in the state of Washington. It has a five year warranty which includes the tubes themselves! Who else warranties tubes for more than a few months?

Crimson 275 sounds almost exactly how you would expect it to. It sounds tubey, warm and has many layers. It’s quite enveloping. Do you want to appreciate the nuances of a human voice? A guitar? A piano? That’s what Crimson 275 is designed to communicate.

The topic of tube power amps in audio gets quite heated- just like the amps themselves!

Crimson 275 is a game changer in many ways. First of all, it offers 75×2 of horse power. Most $6k, 75 pound amps offer just 50×2. It’s just not enough power for most speakers.

> Crimson 275 offers 75×2 of power and weighs just 19 lbs! Crimson 275 runs KT-120 tubes.

> Crimson 275 doesn’t run HOT. It’s barely warm to the touch. We can thank Bob Carver for innovative circuitry that nobody else has, to achieve this.

> Crimson 275 also runs very QUIET. Even when run into the efficient Klipsch line of speakers, it never adds noise to infringe on music. You can’t say the same about competing big dogs.

Most of us long time audiophiles have considered tube amps, or had experience with them.
Since 1977 I’ve dealt with numerous tube vendors. The story with their amplifiers is virtually identical.
There have always been bugaboos with such designs.

They’re:

> Big-Heavy
The average 50×2 power amp is a big chunk running 60 pounds plus. Most 75×2 or 100×2 amps run more like 75 pounds plus. Crimson 275 is only 19 pounds!

> Hottt
Heat is the killer of all things electronic. Whether it’s components on a board, or the traces themselves, heat is a killer and virtually every brand out there runs way hot. Crimson 275 is barely warm to the touch.

> Noisy
All big boy tube amps have annoying hum/hiss- recognizable within music or at idle. It’s quite rare to find an exception. Crimson 275 is quiet. It won’t be an issue regardless of your speaker. We have run Crimson 275 with the Klipsch LaScala AL5, 105dB SPL! It’s a marriage made in heaven. Check it out with the $4k per pair Forte 3s! It’s another perfect tandem.

> Unreliable
With massive heat comes massive, expensive failures. Every company making these behemoths says they’ve got the problems licked. Nope. Never. I’ve not seen one of these big boys that didn’t break your heart.

> Tube Life
All these big, hot competitors, run your tubes hot as blazes. It makes tubes fail, typically within a couple years. Often less. Carver warranties his for FIVE. Why? He can. He doesn’t run them HOT.

> Modest Power
Almost all speakers sound better with a SWIFT KICK. Power of 50×2 plus sure helps. Power of 75×2 is really getting there. With Crimson 275, we have a solid 75×2. Mac’s 75×2 is a great amp. It weighs 75 lbs and runs $6k!

Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Tchaikovsky is second to no composer in writing beautiful music, regardless of the form. He wrote some of the most popular symphonies ever. His violin concerto and first piano concerto are as good as they come!
But alas… he was rarely confident and almost always second guessed himself. He kept lifelong diaries with intimate details of his life and sketchings of musical ideas. In a tizzy shortly before his death, he burned all of his diaries. Along with his thoughts and worries, undoubtedly great music went up in smoke.
With Chopin, we were luckier. When he died, he left a box of approximately 20 compositions for his sister (a fine pianist in her own right). He said he didn’t think any of the pieces were worth keeping. SHE thought so and some of his most valued works are among them, including his great Fantaisie Impromptu.

NAD C275BEE Power Amp $1300 (150×2, 6h, 17 1/8w, 15d, 33 lbs)

This fantastic power amp has been back ordered for months. With the array of great gear NAD makes, this CLASSIC SERIES two channel, class AB power amp sometimes gets lost in the shuffle. They have spent their resources making other “more hip” products and have just caught up on C275BEE.

If you’re after a battleship of a power amp at an affordable price, think CLASSIC NAD. Further, C275BEE can be bridged and delivers 330w per chassis, monoblock. This AB amp harkens back to a day where power amps were supreme beasts of burden. There were precious few tricks of the trade. It was mostly blood and guts. That’s what this beast is all about.

The sound of C275BEE is extremely muscular. The weight that this gorilla delivers is like a sledgehammer. It has the CLASSIC warm, round, powerful sound you’ve come to love from NAD.
If you would love a McIntosh or Bryston but $7k just isn’t in the cards, please consider C275BEE. It is the epitome of the ultimate AB performance at the law of diminishing returns.

Don’t hold it against this amp that it’s a CLASSIC design! The 150×2 rating into 8 ohms doesn’t begin to tell the whole story. THD is at scant levels = .008%! Due to NAD’s patented PowerDrive & Soft Clipping technology (a couple of useful tricks are employed!) C275BEE peaks at double its rated power and is stable down to two ohms, so it can drive any speaker.

Even if you hit it hard, Soft Clipping keeps the sound palatable. An amp driving music under control will pass a nice looking square wave. If you abuse/clip the amp, the top right portion of the square gets ragged and sounds distorted- just like when you turn your car stereo up too high. That’s your amp clipping. Soft Clipping from NAD is a patented circuit which rolls off the spikes = hard edge. The music stays smooth and not grossly distorted.

It will give you big time ummph with Maggies for example- that you’d never expect the speakers to be capable of. It is quiet enough to be used with the high efficiency Klipsches. And it has the dynamics and warmth to make GoldenEars sound twice as expensive as their price tag implies.

By the way BEE stands for Bjorn Erik Edvarsson, NAD’s point dog designer. He assigns the moniker BEE for products especially close to his heart.

C275BEE uses great quality parts- a Holmgren Toroidal transformer (ideal for Packer fans!), discrete circuitry, class A voltage stage & distortion cancellation circuitry.

NAD C165BEE Stereo Preamp $1000

C165BEE is the perfect companion for C275BEE above. It too was on back order for several months. We’re delighted to have this CLASSIC stereo preamp back in the fold. We missed it. It has an outstanding phono section, headphone amp and extremely useful tone controls to boot.

Take a look at our Nov 2018 newsletter where we provide the details on this guy.

Sir Thomas Beecham (1879-1961)

The famous pianist/conductor wasn’t a fan of avantgarde music. When asked if he had heard any music of composer Karl Stockhausen, Beecham answered, “No, but I believe I have trodden in some.”