Ultimate Adcom

I am sorry if most of my posts lately seem to say little more than "look what I bought", but I have just stumbled on a number of pieces lately that I had been looking for a while. Not long ago I was complaining about never finding any decent deals, and then a few just popped up. Granted, I am not talking about some of the super scores like $25 preamps and goodwill, rather some deals that seem to be significantly below typical used-market prices. My latest was another local craigslist find. I had actually seen it reposted for the second time, so I took a chance and offered the seller a good bit less than they were asking, and my offer was accepted.

I have owned an Adcom flagship GFA-5802 power amp and GCD-750 CD player for a while now. My long-term intention has always been to eventually complete the system with a (GFP-750 preamp, and ideally a second GFA-5802 which would allow me to bi-amp my Infinity RS 9 Kappas. So what should pop-up on craigslist but a GFP-750 and a GFA-5802 about 40 minutes away from me. In the end I got both for about $500-600 less than I see them go for on Ebay or Audiogon.

They did require a little cleaning, but otherwise were in good shape. As my listening room has yet to be finished, my wife was gracious enough to allow to use of the living room for "a few days" of listening. I have written a lot about my home office system lately, which I really enjoy, but let me tell you, now it is definitely only my second best. The 9 Kappas really wake up when they are bi-amped, and GFP-750 seems to be every bit as good as Stereophile said it is. There is still some room for improvement as this series of Adcom equipment offers balanced interconnects. I don't yet have any balance cables, and I have never used a fully balanced system before, so I don't know what improvements I might expect, if any, but I am curious.

I also expect the last home theater speaker I had been looking for to arrive by the end of the week. With that I think I might actually be finished. It is now time to get that listening room finished and start to enjoy the music.

Rob

Very cool! Do you have head on Pic?

Bi-amping hungry speakers is the way to go to me, it is my intention to bi-amp my Legacy's.

Are the 5802's plagued with the electrolite problem that the 585 is?

Jim

To my knowledge the caps are not an issue on the 5802. I have certainly not heard of any problems discussed online. That said, the 5802 might not have been around long enough yet for it to show the same problems that the 585 and 565 have had. I hope that Adcom learned something from the 565 and 585, and corrected the issue in later models.

BTW, here are a few more pics. Unfortunately it is a cloudy day and the light coming into the livingroom stinks for getting good pictures.

Rob

plenty good light, nice shots, btw, when can I come over for a listen, well actually stay for a while. maybe adoption, or something. I could hang out in the unfinished listening/elroy's room. wow, its already got half my name on the door.

elroy

i didnt know Adcom made such attractive pieces. i find their styling to be on the utilitarian side, but these are gorgeous and i bet they sound even better.

When Nelson Pass puts his hand on something is always very good.
The "European looks" of these units are just staggering. Enjoy.

It is amazing what a small brass plate and a few switches can do to transform the attractiveness of piece of equipment.

Dang! Those look sweet. No apology needed for those. If looking for something and it exceeds the affordability index best to jump on it . Helluva setup.

Congrats! That's some serious looking gear. Specs please!

Here you go...

Adcom GFA-5802 Power Amplifier
- Power into 8 ohms: 300w/ch
- Power into 4 ohms: 450w/ch into 4 ohms
- Dynamic Headroom into 4 ohms: 2.3db
- S/N ratio: >105db
- 16 Mosfet output devices per channel.
- 100,000 microfarads of power supply capacitance
- capable of driving 1 ohm loads
- balanced inputs
- weighs 45 lbs.

In the past I remember reading that the GFA-5802 is biased for Class A operation up to 50 watts. I can't seem to find exact information about that on the web anymore. However I can believe it is biased fairly high as the amp draws 540VA of power while idling, and up to 1340VA out 300 watts into 8 ohms. For comparison the GFA-555II idles at 72VA.

Adcom GFP-750 Preamplifier
- Can be used as an active or passive device
- single class-A HexFet gain stage acts as pure current source
- balanced output and CD player input
- toroidal transformer, separate windings for each channel
- weighs 15 lbs.
- S/N ratio: >102db

Adcom GCD-750 Power Amplifier
- Pacific Microsonics PMD-100 8x oversampling digital filter and HDCD decoder
- Burr-Brown 20-bit Colinear DACs
- class-A discrete MOSFET analog stage (no opamps)
- twin transformers, one for each channel
- separate secondary windings for digital and analog stages
- balanced outputs
- weighs 20.5 lbs.
- S/N ratio: >106db

If I can find the parts I will be making a set of balanced cables this weekend.

Rob

No wonder you tried to get a sub-woofer............ That's a lot of power and dynamic range for a set of small speakers.
I think the GFA 5802 amp was designed by John Curl, who later designs Parasound JC-1 monoblocks for $6k a pair...
Incredible audio gear, those Adcom. Congrats.

Man that's beautiful gear.

I know of a stack of these at a local hi-fi shop- the CD player is inop.

I can get you the phone number if you'd like- dunno what they're doing with the stuff but it's Ben there a while....

I'm not a big Adcom fan, but I could be really happy w/ your electronics. You have their best.
I hope you are vertical bi-amping your speakers w/ each amp driving one speaker vs. horizontal bi-amping w/ one amp for lows and one amp for highs. This is where you get the real benefit of bi-amping.
As far as balanced interconnect you should not disregard Belden "star quad" mic cables. Superb and cheap.
Nice photo w/ shallow depth of field. Really an artistic presentation.