Looking for a good used Amp around $500

[agidol]

Hi, I'm looking for a good used power amp to drive my Paradigm Studio 60 speakers. I've been using Yamaha RXV730 AV receiver to drive them and now I'm wondering if I can improve the sound by getting a dedicated stereo amp. My budget is around $500 so please let me know if you have any suggestions. thx.

[Feanor]

Hi, I'm looking for a good used power amp to drive my Paradigm Studio 60 speakers. I've been using Yamaha RXV730 AV receiver to drive them and now I'm wondering if I can improve the sound by getting a dedicated stereo amp. My budget is around $500 so please let me know if you have any suggestions. thx.

You might get better sound depending how big your listening room is and how loud you want to play. The Paradigm Studio 60's are reasonably sensitive and the Yamaha's 75 watts/channel ought to be sufficient for Home Theater use. If you want to play music an amp of >150 watts might make a real improvement.

For how many channels do you want more power?? 5 channels, fronts and centre or just fronts?? If the first, then perhaps you ought to buy a higher powered receiver, (though this is likely to run well above $500). If just the fronts, $500 will buy you a used, 2 channel amp that you can hook up to the main, low-level outputs of the Yamaha, and that will make an improvement for music listening.

But note that if you're thinking just the fronts, you might have to use "stereo" or "2 channel" mode in order to direct the sound to the fronts away from the center, and -- depending on how the Yamaha works -- you might loose your subwoofer, so there could be trade-offs. If you are willing to go that way, I'd suggest a used, late-model Adcom, for instance the GFA-5500 with 200 wt/ch which you can probably get on eBay for around $500.

Better, and avoiding the "2 channel" mode issue, would be a used GFA-5503, the 3 channel version of the 5500, however it will be hard be more expensive and harder to find.

[agidol]

I was thinking about using this amp for 2 channel music listening and use my yammy as preamp. For HT I was going to use yammy to power center/surrounds. My living room is about 23*13 open to foyer and dining room of about 10*10. I usually play around -37 dbs max (usually lower). I'll definetely look into Adcom as you suggested. How about brands like Rotel or NAD? anything in their brand I can find in my budget range? Being an audio rookie, I've never really experienced separates vs. AV receiver so I'm curious about sound quality gain. Thanks in advance.

[canuckle]

With $500, why buy used? Get a Rotel 1050 or 1070. The 1050 is below your price and the 1070 could be had for that if you dicker enough.

That said, you're not likely to really hear a difference. You might think you do, cause people love to think they do after they spend money - and that might be good enough for you - but you're not even pushing your Yamaha, so it's not like you need a separate amp to keep up with the power-demand.

[Mr Peabody]

www.spearitsound.com was showing a Classe' DR-10 for around $699.00 if you could go the extra expense. This amp is 200x2 and ran $2k new. I'd think the extra $200.00 would be well invested if it's really sound quality you are wanting. If you can't go that, I personally think the Adcom amps would match better with Yamaha than either NAD or Rotel.

[PeruvianSkies]

I usually see a few Parasound Halo A23's on ebay (usually new) for about $500, which is a real steal!!!! The list price is $850 or so, but it's a great amp that has served me well for a little while now and I am quite satisfied.