Buying amp over-seas?

[PRHunt]

I enjoyed building a power amp about 15 years ago from Jaycar kits based on a design from "Silicon Chip" magazine. Class A/B solid state, 115w into 8 ohm, 175w into 4 ohm, vanishingly low distortion and dead quiet. Each channel has its own power supply - a 300VA transformer and 24000uF of filtration per supply rail. Pure Audio Goodness!

 

[Bobbsy]

Ah, that's what I did wrong. I tried to pass audio through the Carvin amps rather than toss them across a parking lot! How silly of me.

My experience was in a fixed theatre installation. The amps were permanently installed in a well ventilated rack with an empty 1U space between each of them. One amp fed a two speaker centre cluster, one was for L/R fills and the other two were for monitor wedges (max 4). The speaker cabinets were 8 ohm so impedance wasn't an issue and nothing was ever over driven--we were talking theatre levels, not rock band stuff.

Despite this, at various times over the 3 years I was involved in doing various shows at that theatre, each of the 4 amps failed at least once (not always for me I might add).

A bad batch? Maybe--but the UK distributor insisted on repairs rather than replacing them (and sometimes took months). Eventually the Carvins were replaced with Crown amps of similar rating and, to the best of my knowledge (I moved to Aus 5 years ago) those have performed without any issues for 8 years now.

I can only judge them by my own experience.

Oh, and I've been freelancing at the local theatre with a D&B Line Array system with a mix of D12, D6 and e-Pac amps and haven't blown any of those up yet either!

 

[ocnor]

My experience was in a fixed theatre installation. The amps were permanently installed in a well ventilated rack with an empty 1U space between each of them. One amp fed a two speaker centre cluster, one was for L/R fills and the other two were for monitor wedges (max 4). The speaker cabinets were 8 ohm so impedance wasn't an issue and nothing was ever over driven--we were talking theatre levels, not rock band stuff.

Despite this, at various times over the 3 years I was involved in doing various shows at that theatre, each of the 4 amps failed at least once (not always for me I might add).

That could explain the problems that you had. Since that was not your gear you have no idea what some jackass may have done to the system while you weren't there.
I've also had good luck with Crown amps but they are not as transparent as carvin amps IMO.