"A. D'A." wrote in message
m
Last time I heard a pro amp doing a credible job of driving ribbons,
it was a QSC USA 1300.


What about your beloved Mackies or the new Behringer amps.

Another friend of mine who builds his own ribbons has a Macie M1400.

If the Mackies are good candidates I could place a resistor in series
with
the fan to slow it down and reduce the noise.

That can work, although the base fan noise seems higher on the Mackies than
on the QSCs. The Mackie puts the fan at the base of a horn that is pointed
right out the front of the amp.

The Behringers I
understand may be copies of the QSC and could be had for $300.

I've heard people say nice things about them, but I don't know anybody who
has one.

Try eBay. USA 850s and 900s are the most common "find", usually
closing around $200. Will 375 wpc or so do the job for you? How much
does it take to damage that ribbon? It would be good to not be able
to go there.

I think 375 he should be perfect. I would never listen to it that
loud, but it would have more than sufficient headroom for peaks and
the ribbons should easily handle it. BTW, I seem to remember reading
some negative stuff on the 900s, but I'm not sure.

People like to **** on em because they do a lot of humble work. They are
clean and they last.

Thanks for all your insights.

BTW, years ago we had a couple of discussions in RAO about blind tests
and I was not in total agreement with your total dismissal of sighted
tests. Even though I still don't totally agree (I think they
sometimes can be used to determine if further investigation is
warranted), I can now see why you were so fervently against it. For
many sighted testing is the measure, especially in RAO and some
magazines I no longer subscribe to (could not take it any longer).
What is really disappointing though is the level RAO has dropped to.
It caught me totally by surprised how my inquires were used as another
excuse to debase any form of discussion.

Believe it or not, one stated goal of this running crapmouth act on RAO is
to get me to stay away. The good news is that there are a goodly number of
other audio groups.

Your comment about the group being a lot more civilized in the days of Zippy
are regrettably quite true. The irony is that some of these creeps were
friends of Zippy.