[Phlogiston]

All in all I can't understand the appeal that these 500Cs, and many of these other tubed Fisher tuner-amplifiers seem to have, it sounds like the amplifier circuitry of these 500Cs is of a very poor design, it sort of reminds me of that Croften-White amp circuit that was tried back in the early 30s where you had to have both tubes in the circuit in perfect condition or bad things would happen. I've never really understood why anyone would build and market an amp with tubes driven to the maximum operating limits, other then just for bragging rights in marketing, something goes slightly wrong and it's meltdown time.
Regards
Arran

I have to agree - but only in a specific context.

I have Dynacos, Sherwoods, Scotts and so on. I use them daily. My setup(s) all are bi-amped using large (very large) solid state amps to drive woofers (sub woofers if you prefer). The largest of which is a DH500 driving both channels into a dual voice coil 15" woofer (4 ohms/channel, better than 1kw) and a Fisher X200 (7868) doing the rest (which can be instantly switched in and out with a Sansui 9090DB for SS - hollow-state comparisons).

There are 4 amps set up as described above (the only valid HiFi comparison being a Scott at the moment). Anyway, I need to drive the base amp, preferably with a variable output so that it tracks. The input varies by pre-amp output, causing the center/tape out to follow, except the Dynaco amps have no center/tape out.

What I have found is that the other brands (less Dynaco since it does not provide this kind of output) Will do a good job with freqs below 100hz using center or tape out. The Fisher is a little muddy - sometimes, but only on the bass.