I should have known. Everything was going great musically. Great new discs were coming out, like Hot Chip’s AMAZING A Bathfull Of Ecstasy and Bill Callahan’s Shepherd In A Sheepskin Vest, and more to come, like the remastered Running On Empty and Eno’s Apollo: Extended Edition. I was finding GREAT used vinyl everywhere. (like a VG+ condition original Mobile Fidelity pressing of Supertramp’s Crime Of The Century for SIX bucks! SIX!)

And then, the cruel, cruel hand of fate struck my stereo: my beloved amplifier got sick. The powerful, sweet beast that is my Harman/Kardon HK990 started shutting itself down occasionally, then more frequently. I found this amp about two years ago on eBay for quite a bargain considering its original $2500 price. It’s a very musical dual-mono Class AB stereo amplifier with room correction and a killer digital-to-audio converter (DAC), and until about a month ago, was very happily driving my NHT Classic Three speakers and CS-10 subwoofer.

Alas, poor amp, we hardly knew ye

And then, the music died. Just the ominous words “Protection Mode”, then silence. Craaaaaaaaaap. I took it to two local places, who threw up their hands and told me to send it to the very reputable United Radio in Syracuse, they’d know what to do. They did – they’d have to do pretty much a complete teardown of the unit to isolate and fix the problem for almost as much as much as I paid for it.

So, for almost a month and a half I was without my Wow-And-Flutter engine to listen to my physical media. Like Joni said, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. So I had United send the unit back to me, and I set to looking for a replacement. The only other amp I’d consider the Harman’s equal is the Anthem STR integrated amplifier, but that would set me back a cool $4500. Sad horns. So, I’m saving my pennies for that.

As luck would have it, my diligent research turned up an almost perfect replacement: plenty of power, an fantastic onboard DAC, analog and digital inputs for all of my stuff, a subwoofer output, outputs that would let me keep recording my vinyl finds (a must) and – bonus points – solid retro good looks. It’s the Yamaha A-S801:

Yamaha to the rescue!

It’s not perfect – I’d prefer that it had a display showing me the current volume/selected input, it’s missing a Pre Out/In so I can connect my headphone amp, but damn, this is a fantastic sounding amplifier – more than satisfying. Best of all, I got an open-box model at the wonderful Crutchfield and saved almost $200 off the sticker price!

If anyone wants a beautiful amp and is willing to put several hundred dollars into it to get at least another ten years out of it, it’s up on eBay for the next couple of days. Bid away while I reacquaint myself with Little Feat’s Waiting For Columbus.