The magic of Ampzilla with Dahlquist DQ-10

[E-Stat]

When Saul Marantz and Jon Dahlquist created one of the world's most famous speakers, they used an amplifier with an odd name:Ampzilla.

I first heard John Cooledg'e's Ampzilla driving his Dayton-Wright electrostatics back in '76 or so. He was also reviewing the Thaedra and Thoebe preamps at the time. I worked for a Dahlquist dealer in those days and we had one customer with stacked DQ-10s driven by one.

Bongiorno is back and so is Ampzilla with an updated model.

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[squeegy200]

I recently read a magazine article regarding the introduction of the DQ-10s many years ago. The author met Jon Dahlquist at one of the big shows. At the time, the QUAD ESLs were the rage and the author entered Jon Dahlquists display thinking the DQ-10s were electrostatic copies.

He descibed his first experience with the Dq-10 phase array concept and I remember mention of the Ampzilla components.
What further intrigued the author is Jon had a pair of true Electrostatics in the corner of his display. Mr. Dahlquist would not demonstrate them and indicated they they were not yet ready for public debut. The outcome of those prototypes is unknown and they never made it into production.

[emaidel]

I use an Adcom GFA-5800 high current power amp to drive my DQ-10's, and am delighted with the result. I also supplement them with a Definitive Technology SF-15 powered sub, which blends in quite well (much better in fact than the previous DQ-1W with the Dahlquist Electronic Crossover and a superb Rotel power amp).

Adcom has replaced the 5800 with the 5802, which has even more power (300 watts instead of a "mere" 250 per channel) but it's now priced at over two grand. 5800's can be found on eBay for around $500 - a steal in my book.