Quote Originally Posted by paneristi
Unfortunately, I am not living in the US where one can find PSA easily
If you can type either audiogon.com or audioadvisor.com into your address bar, you can find PSA easily. The amp is only 35 lbs (remember switching amps aren't burdened with weighty heat sinks) so if you can get one from audioadvisor, they have a 30 day return policy and your return shipping will be pretty cheap, although I doubt you'd use the option. The only hurdle could be that the HCA2 has been supplanted with Paul's new GCA series so audioadvisor may be out of stock. Check their website, you never know.

BTW, Tops, have you had any experience with MITerminator 2 speaker cables with B&W CDM 1NT?
Sorry, no. I run Marshall cables myself, although I do respect MIT. To be honest, while I am a proponent of quality wires, I'm not a big believer in esoteric, they-cost-more-than-the-flippin'-amplifier wires. I'm not condemning anybody that is so if you want to flip a ton of dead presidents at your interconnects and speaker cables, go have a ball! It's just not my thing...

Kinder to speakers … a friend of mine blew 2 of his SS amps driving Quad ELS 57. Switching to Audio Innovation tube power amp, he didn’t experience any such thing. What he told me basically is that, when clipping, SS amps can be disastrous. Wrecking either the amp itself or the speakers’ drivers. As with Tube, the worst that can happen is the music becomes unmusical, sounds like AM Radio. Any comment about this? Thx
The infamous Quad ESL's, huh? No wonder he blew his amps. Those 'stats are reknown for their ability devour decent amps, particularly with their rather nasty 1ohm loads.

I'm not an engineer so I can't say whether or not the distortion from an overdriven tube amp is less likely to harm a speaker versus clipping from an overdriven ss amp. Neither is good, I can assure you. There are a couple of engineers on this board so maybe they'll chime in. The bottom line though is that your friend needs to buy the right equipment, whether tube or ss, to drive those Quads. If he's melting amps or driving his tubes to severe distortion, he needs to open his wallet and buy a real amp. Shoot, you should introduce him to the HCA2 as it is load invariant and will drive those ESL's all day without so much as getting more than warm to the touch.