Post your EC gear (with pictures preferably) and tell us how it sounds, perhaps even in elaborste terns.
Comparisons to other gear would be nice!
Some of these truly are on the level of arc welders.
I have an ECI-1 and don’t feel the need to change the amp. It can drive nearly all speakers. Stable down to 0.5ohms.
Only local feedback used. Highly biased for class A.
A max of around 400W into under 2ohm…
Very impressive power supplies for both mono channels. Simplistic circuit architectute - it IS an ampliwire, as reads on the face plate.
Not to put too fine a point on it, that amp has “balls”.
In other words, I like high current class A/AB amps with transformers and such when they are well built and nice and quiet (relatively speaking).
That said, I have recently acquired a pair of switching amps (GaN-based circuits) for my office system that have pretty good oomph and are dead quiet. (AGD Productions “The Audions”/85 wpc)
My main amps are 500 wpc monoblocks from Emotiva (XPA-1 MK Is) that have very large transformers.
pair od AW400 monoblocks and ECP1 phono here , absolute joy to listen through theese.
before, i’ve had ECI5mk2 and aslo EC-4.8 preamp (now replaced with ARC REF5SE preamp).
what pictures would you like to see?
here is some older random evening photo
The heat sinks on your amp could not possibly be large enough to be pure class A…I believe the specs are for a class AB amp. If my memory serves me correctly…E C amps run the first watt class A with the rest biased for class B.
My guess would be that the unit is hot to the touch because of not much sinking area and the heat sinking area being inside the box with not much ventilation to disperse the heat buildup…
For some clarity on your amp being Class A… here is a quote from Volker Hunger of Electrocompaniet…
With “Class A” written on the front panels, one might be led to assume that these amplifiers actually work in Class A rather than Class A/B. However, these amplifiers are really cool to the touch which doesn’t rhyme with typical Class A behavior. The manuals do not specifically state the working principle so, in order to get clarity, I emailed Electrocompaniet and my mail was promptly responded to by Volker Hunger. As it turns out, Electrocompaniet uses the Class A label similar to how Technics used the Class AA label on their amplifiers in the ’80s. As Volker explained:
“All our amplifiers are Class A/B and have been for approximately 40 years. “Class A”, in this case, is rather meant as a quality designation, like reference… , first-class… High quality… We know, this term can be confusing if someone does not know about the technical details but it has been on our front plates for a long time, so this designation has been kept for historical reasons, just like the acrylic material for our front plates and the golden knobs. All pre- amplifiers and output circuits, for example in CD-players, Steamers, and the like, are a completely class A design. It’s one part of our design philosophy that transistors in these circuits “work on high class A operating points. It is also correct for all circuits of our power amplifiers in up to the output circuit. These are all Class A designs, but of course not the output section”.
virtually all EC amps are AB , however they are “highly” biased to allow first X watts to be provided purely by class A before switching to class A/B.
As my memory serves, it’s about 30W for my AW400s and about 40w for NEMOs .
It is really confusing that they display class A on front panels, however in reality they play class A most of the time if listening at moderate levels.
Each AW400 monoblock draws approx 100W at idle - as reported by my P10 - i did not had chance to see NEMOs draw at idle, but i guess it can be found on the internet
in regards to EC sound - i had few chances to hear EC vs other manufacturer (however usually at lower price) at the same speakers - it was always EC which sounded distinctively more natural in sound coloration and realism - that drawn my attention 1st. Then it was it’s ability to stay undistorted at musical peaks, going subterrain-deep without sacrifciing the rest of music, and impressively deep and wide soundstage. pure
however, after years with NADAs, i’ve started to thing maybe too much about how would it sound with let’s say Mundorf caps…
photo of AW400 after yearly cleaning cycle with compressed air:
