D
Deleted member 133
Guest
The first truly-powerful stereo amplifier that I ever bought is the Hitachi HMA-8300. It's a 53 lb. class "G" beast rated at 200 W/ch (continuous) and 400 W/ch (peak) into 8 ohms, with very low noise / distortion.
Over the years it has seen use in many a situation: in my residence room at university; at residence floor parties, and, one time, powering a huge pair of PA speakers in a concert hall.
Quite some time ago it got put into storage in my basement, then got loaned out to a friend, and finally returned to me when he said it was not working properly. I never bothered to check it out - just put it back into storage.
A couple of weeks ago I remembered it and decided to put it back into service. So I took it into my preferred local repair shop and $380 later, it's back home in like-new condition.
I swapped it for a NAD amp that was powering my 2.1 system that sits within my main HT's 7.1 system. Basically I can feed any analogue source from the Zone 2 output on my Onkyo PR-SC886 to a dedicated speaker / sub combo consisting of a pair of Koss CM/1020 and a SVS 20-39 PC+ - taking advantage of the existing room / its acoustics. So if I want to just listen to some stereo source, I can fire it up, instead of the whole HT.
It took but a couple of minutes to re-balance the system and then I skipped through a bunch of CDs to give it a listen. I tried a number of volume levels pretty much up to as much as any sane person would ever want to be in the same room with (which is probably several dBs short of "Heeman" levels - but I digress).
The amp sounded exactly as I remember it - which is to say like any other solid-state amp that I've listened to that's not been driven into clipping: indistinguishable from all the other "quiet" "clean" amps I've ever listened to. (You do know that they all "sound" the same - right?
) There was certainly absolutely no sign that the amp was working even moderately hard to deliver such loud levels.
My only quibble... One of the things I knew was not working when it went into the shop was the right power meter. The lights (two per) were ok, but it was not registering anything the last time I used it. Well they fixed the meter, but they also decided to replace the meters' bulbs with LED units and they are too white / bright for my liking. The former lights had a much nicer "tube-like" warm glow to them. I do admit that the meters' needles are now visible across the room though.
Jeff
ps. This is but one of several restorations that I've been having done over the last couple of months. There's two other pieces that are now like-new as well: Pioneer SX-750 stereo receiver and an Akai GXC-325D cassette deck. I'm awaiting a new stylus for an ADC XLM MkII Improved cartridge, that will be fitted to a Pioneer PL-510 turntable. They'll form the heart of a "nostalgia" stereo system that I'll set up in a spare room, along with a pair of Bose 301 speakers (which is how they were all last together when they were all working decades ago.)
There's two other components still in the shop (a Pioneer LD player, and a Nakamichi cassette deck) and I'm thinking of taking one other it for some noisy switch cleaning / replacement as need be.
Over the years it has seen use in many a situation: in my residence room at university; at residence floor parties, and, one time, powering a huge pair of PA speakers in a concert hall.
Quite some time ago it got put into storage in my basement, then got loaned out to a friend, and finally returned to me when he said it was not working properly. I never bothered to check it out - just put it back into storage.
A couple of weeks ago I remembered it and decided to put it back into service. So I took it into my preferred local repair shop and $380 later, it's back home in like-new condition.
I swapped it for a NAD amp that was powering my 2.1 system that sits within my main HT's 7.1 system. Basically I can feed any analogue source from the Zone 2 output on my Onkyo PR-SC886 to a dedicated speaker / sub combo consisting of a pair of Koss CM/1020 and a SVS 20-39 PC+ - taking advantage of the existing room / its acoustics. So if I want to just listen to some stereo source, I can fire it up, instead of the whole HT.
It took but a couple of minutes to re-balance the system and then I skipped through a bunch of CDs to give it a listen. I tried a number of volume levels pretty much up to as much as any sane person would ever want to be in the same room with (which is probably several dBs short of "Heeman" levels - but I digress).
The amp sounded exactly as I remember it - which is to say like any other solid-state amp that I've listened to that's not been driven into clipping: indistinguishable from all the other "quiet" "clean" amps I've ever listened to. (You do know that they all "sound" the same - right?
) There was certainly absolutely no sign that the amp was working even moderately hard to deliver such loud levels.My only quibble... One of the things I knew was not working when it went into the shop was the right power meter. The lights (two per) were ok, but it was not registering anything the last time I used it. Well they fixed the meter, but they also decided to replace the meters' bulbs with LED units and they are too white / bright for my liking. The former lights had a much nicer "tube-like" warm glow to them. I do admit that the meters' needles are now visible across the room though.
Jeff
ps. This is but one of several restorations that I've been having done over the last couple of months. There's two other pieces that are now like-new as well: Pioneer SX-750 stereo receiver and an Akai GXC-325D cassette deck. I'm awaiting a new stylus for an ADC XLM MkII Improved cartridge, that will be fitted to a Pioneer PL-510 turntable. They'll form the heart of a "nostalgia" stereo system that I'll set up in a spare room, along with a pair of Bose 301 speakers (which is how they were all last together when they were all working decades ago.)
There's two other components still in the shop (a Pioneer LD player, and a Nakamichi cassette deck) and I'm thinking of taking one other it for some noisy switch cleaning / replacement as need be.
