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Liquid Lightning


seacard

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I am trying to wrap my mind around what must go into a solid-state amp to explain a $4250 sticker price. I understand that chassis costs are often one of the largest expenses, but I look at that chassis and it seems many DIY amps on here are more impressive in that regard. It's certainly far short of the RSA A10, looks-wise. Unless there is a few ounces of platinum inside, this seems pretty outrageous. Or am I missing something?

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seems pretty straight forward to me:

if it seems like a good price, and you are looking for that, then buy it

if it doesn't seem like a good price, and you're looking for that, buy something else

if it doesn't seem like a good price, and you're not looking for that, stfu

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The way I see it Alex Cavalli has a lot to prove after the Exstata fuckup. Now none of his amps are well designed so if he's smart then he took the fixed Exstata design KG sent him and used that. That amp would not be quite up to the standard of the KGSSHV but not a bad attempt. Largely stolen from the 90's Stax amps though but lets just leave that aside. Here is what my take on this amp looks like:

exstatav2.th.jpg

It was done from the KGSSHV boards so that's why they are so similar. Now for what's actually in the box, we'll have to wait and see but reports of it running cool and being very light (8lbs) aren't very promising. Certainly doesn't point to a high bias outputstage and the large heatsinks/transformer needed to sustain it.

One thing that we can be sure of is that NoNoNoNoNoNo has become the laughing stock of HF for his blatant shilling of this amp. Lots of discussion about this and the few people considering an amp have all backed off due to this.

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Now for what's actually in the box, we'll have to wait and see but reports of it running cool and being very light (8lbs) aren't very promising. Certainly doesn't point to a high bias outputstage and the large heatsinks/transformer needed to sustain it.

That's the first thing I thought too. Hell, I think the transformer for the KGSSHV weighs about 8 lbs

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seems pretty straight forward to me:

if it seems like a good price, and you are looking for that, then buy it

if it doesn't seem like a good price, and you're looking for that, buy something else

if it doesn't seem like a good price, and you're not looking for that, stfu

Best advice of the year there Dan!

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The review thread (prototype) on hf claims a weight of around 12 lbs... the 8 lb figure was for the LFire

Indeed, I didn't even read that "review" until now (somebody posted the weight in one of the meet impression threads). That piece is almost as bad as Skylabs A-10 review... facepalm.png

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Indeed, I didn't even read that "review" until now (somebody posted the weight in one of the meet impression threads). That piece is almost as bad as Skylabs A-10 review... facepalm.png

I just love the long ass list of music that was listened to for this review. He might have well just put: "Every single artist out there in every single genre of music"

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I didn't see a review thread about the LL over there. I'll have to go look for it, but it's not often that I add a new thread to follow, since I usually just read the olds threads that I subscribed to a while back.

I for one thought the LL sounded very good at RMAF with O2 Mk1, HE-60 and SR-009, and it sounded nothing like my SS eXStatA rev1. While I thought the BHSE was great with O2 mk1 but a little bright with 009, the WES had good tone with the 009 but it didn't pair as well with the O2 Mk1. Somehow they both sounded good with the LL.

I'm still straddling the fence about whether I still want to replace my WES with the LL or BHSE, or just do the WES Mk2 upgrade with Jack Wu and keep it. If all I want to listen to is the 009, then my WES and KGSS seem to perform similarly well. When it comes to driving the O2 the KGSS is, I admit, slightly better and certainly more powerful.

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