I remember those. Max Townsend used to use and recommend them.
The 60 Watt is good. I heard one years ago. They go for £700-900. I’ve not seen one of the 30W amps for sale for ages though, they get £500 ish in nice nick.
That’s kind of you Bob, although going on recent, past (bad) experiences, I’m not sure 15W would be enough to drive my 90dB speaks.
F5(25w ish) or Aleph J/30 is around £4-500 in parts. Plus whatever it costs to have it assembled.
15w is cutting it fine, but could be ok, the ACA has more issues than just being 5w. (low damping factor, high distortion)
The Hiraga Monstre drives small 89 dB/W speakers pretty well & that only goes to about 7W. But I think it’s pretty load tolerant.
Ah, OK, thanks Edd.
So, assuming a couple of hundred quid to build, I would probably be better off looking for a used Class A power / integrated then.
Just depends what you want, you wont get a real Aleph or F5 for anywhere near that money, and anything that runs hot and is used could easily need expensive power supply capacitors replacing.
Yah takes your choice, horses for courses, etc.
Yep, realise that.
I’m just trying to find a way to avoid too costly a mistake to try a half decent Class A amp.
Oh right, where are you? I have a 30w aleph you can try, @mmichbam has an F5 I built, @Ijrussell has a pair of the 60w monos I built as will @crimsondonkey I’m sure you could arrange a try of any of them.
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Class A doesn’t automatically mean great sound. Stuff is more complicated than that. It removes some distortion, but there’s plenty of ways to introduce crapness into class A.
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I’m based in lovely Luton, just off J10 of the M1.
Don’t worry though folks, I have decent home insurance 
I’m near Peterborough, could easily meet half way.
Or you know, host a bake off 
I have a pair of the Pass DIY VFET 2 kits from DiyAudio, they are good for about 15W Class A
No idea about cost as I have been to busy to progress
That would work, jolly D of you.
May be interested in one of those too Simon, price dependant.
No worries, just send me a pm at some point and we can figure something out.
Will do.
I haven’t priced up chassis, psu, mains tx etc, so cant give an accurate total, but my guess is it’s likely to be around £1K for a stereo power amp in the big DiyAudio chassis
then it comes down to one big mains tx and psu, or 2 for dual mono inside the box, and type of psu caps, then CRC, or CLC or LCLC psu design etc etc 
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Get in touch with SQ… on Pink fish who may have one set of boards left or otherwise advise. I am hoping to try an Io into mine at some point.