replacing Proceed hpa-2

[shoafb]

I am planning on replacing a Proceed HPA-2 pretty soon. It's failed a couple of times, fortunatley under warranty so I'm getting a little gun shy of the amp now. Maybe I am over-reacting, the amp sounds great and has tons of power, just don't know if I can get over the nagging "doubt" that it could fail again. My current options are a used Musical Fidelity tri-vista 300 intergrated.... not a great warranty there either though

Also thinking of a Bryston 4bsst (new) awesome warranty and they post schematics on line...... couldn't believe it. Can't argue with a company like that. How do they sound though?

Rest of system:

Audio Research LS-15 pre
ML Ascent
Musical Fidelity A308cd
Transparent Ultra (mm) interconnect from cd to pre
Transparent Ultra (xl) balanced between pre and amp
Transparent Ultra (mm) bi-wire

 

[roberto]

I am planning on replacing a Proceed HPA-2 pretty soon. It's failed a couple of times, fortunatley under warranty so I'm getting a little gun shy of the amp now. Maybe I am over-reacting, the amp sounds great and has tons of power, just don't know if I can get over the nagging "doubt" that it could fail again. My current options are a used Musical Fidelity tri-vista 300 intergrated.... not a great warranty there either though

Also thinking of a Bryston 4bsst (new) awesome warranty and they post schematics on line...... couldn't believe it. Can't argue with a company like that. How do they sound though?

Rest of system:

Audio Research LS-15 pre
ML Ascent
Musical Fidelity A308cd
Transparent Ultra (mm) interconnect from cd to pre
Transparent Ultra (xl) balanced between pre and amp
Transparent Ultra (mm) bi-wire

Hola...to my liking, the Bryston is still one of the best SS sounding amps around. It deliveries enough power to drive any ML model, and very clean. Stage is wide, but to my liking lacks some depth at lower level and lower mid-range...listen Horowitz live in Moscow. Also it is good in air between notes, and very clean in little details, listen Bob James and Earl Klugh one on one, bass is deep and well controlled...good for ML. You won't be missing your Proceed, as example, the strings, listen Vivaldi RR for diverse intruments...here you can listen the dialogue between the two violins with incredible detail...in other words, Bryston is very good. I know that out there are a lot of good alternatives around, but if you can listen this amp. in your home, you will find that it is very musical.
Happy listening and trust your ears!
Cheers,
Roberto.

 

[Spike]

Proceed have a reputation for making reliable products and they have stood behind their products. In your case, it's very unlikely that the Proceed amplifier failed (twice) trying to drive your speakers. Furthermore, you mentioned the Proceed is still under warranty so the failures happened in a fairly short period of time. If I were to read into this scenario, I would take a close look at the entire system before putting the blame solely on the Proceed HPA-2. There's a fair chance that the root cause of the Proceed failure may be elsewhere in your system and it could cause a different amplifier to fail as well.
In the case that it turns out to be the Proceed amplifier failure, I would agree with Roberto that the Bryston (especially the SST series) is an excellent choice. Looking at your system description, the Bryston is a perfect fit given the tube pre-amplifier on the input side, and the ML Ascent on the speaker side The ARC-Bryston combination presents musicality that I don't think the MF TriVista integrated can match. But then, that is just my opinion and you'll need to..."trust your ears".

Spike

 

[shoafb]

The first failure occured about just short of 4 years into owning the amp. The amp would go into protection once you took it out of standby. One of the channels had something fail. This was during the "move" Madrigal was doing so after about 3 months without any good plan to fix it they replaced the unit with a "B" stock. The second failure with the "B" stock seems different. The amp never comes up to standby mode, power indicator just flashes. I confirmed there was no problem with incoming power or the PC.

 

[Spike]

Time to move on

It's too bad that Harman does not want to stand behind their (discontinued) products anymore. Oh well, time to start looking for the Bryston...

Spike

 

[shoafb]

well they did give me a new warranty with the "B" stock amp so they are supporting it.....just a little gun shy now after 2 faillures. It's a great amp but I can take a little less "finess" if it means the amp last 20 years The Bryston might actually work out better for me as I listen mostly to rock.

 

[Spike]

Not quite

well they did give me a new warranty with the "B" stock amp so they are supporting it.

Replacing with a defective B-stock is not exactly what I consider "standing behind their products". Enough said on that subject. Now, on to the Bryston... The SST series is quite good and I don't think it loses to the Proceed in terms of finesse. It may lose out to the Proceed's bigger brother Levinson, and other more expensive amplifiers but not to the Proceed.

Spike

 

[thresholdman]

I just moved form Bryston to Proceed and the HPA series outperforms the SST series. Levinson is now supporting the HPA sereis and they have stated they intend to support it for a long time.

 

[hsam]

Mf

Hi!
Im have a KW500 on my Aerius i and it works well,Before that i had M.levinson 331 and a Aragon 4004mkII.I must say that i like the MF best,the power is very good.I cant say anything about the other amps i havent heard them.