Gryphon Colosseum stopped working
- Thread starter LarryK
- Start date
My Colosseum is back up and running! The guys at Soundsmith did a great job with the repair and they ran it for a week.
I’ve spent the last four hours glued to the couch, somebody send me takeout, haha.
I’m having second thoughts concerning the conclusion that ConEd killed the amp. Nothing was burned in the amp and a single part of the power supply failed.
Still, I’ve decided to hook all of my gear to a Niagara 5000 in order to have some protection from over-voltage situations.
Here are the specs on the unit:
https://www.audioquest.com/ac-power/ac-power-conditioners/niagara-5000
Any thoughts?
I’ve spent the last four hours glued to the couch, somebody send me takeout, haha.
I’m having second thoughts concerning the conclusion that ConEd killed the amp. Nothing was burned in the amp and a single part of the power supply failed.
Still, I’ve decided to hook all of my gear to a Niagara 5000 in order to have some protection from over-voltage situations.
Here are the specs on the unit:
https://www.audioquest.com/ac-power/ac-power-conditioners/niagara-5000
Any thoughts?
That's wonderful news Larry and I can just picture you on the couch purring with pleasure and gratitude.
Enjoy.
HiFi Plus recently reviewed the 7000 and Alan Sircom was extremely impressed by it. He also commented very favourably on the 5000 which seems very good value.
Opinions do seem to vary on power conditioners and I would suggest you try it on a home demo before committing just to be on the safe side.
Enjoy.
HiFi Plus recently reviewed the 7000 and Alan Sircom was extremely impressed by it. He also commented very favourably on the 5000 which seems very good value.
Opinions do seem to vary on power conditioners and I would suggest you try it on a home demo before committing just to be on the safe side.
Congrats and welcome home! I think Gryphon to wall is still safest overall (not voltage spike reasons). The Gryphon will also shut if it senses too little voltage during peaks. But check with Gryphon.I melted a socket 10 yrs ago of a power conditioner that I was told by the dealer of the power conditioner could handle an old Gryphon Antileon.
That’s wonderful news.
I have my Mephisto plugged on a Torus AVR 16 and I am very pleased with the result. Two friends (one of them with a Diablo 300 and the other with Antileon) are using Torus AVR too.
I have my Mephisto plugged on a Torus AVR 16 and I am very pleased with the result. Two friends (one of them with a Diablo 300 and the other with Antileon) are using Torus AVR too.
If it took from January to May to get it fixed then I would get a more responsive vendor. My Pass XP-22 developed a problem, and between shipping it there, being repaired, going through a few days of burnin/testing, it was back in the system in a little over three weeks. Now a couple of months later, I think it is better than before it broke.
Thanks for the kind comments, everybody!
Yes, It took me three months to get it to the service center. First, I thought it might self-heal, haha. Second, we had ice, snow, and cold weather. Third, I struggled with whether or not to drive a total of about ten hours to fetch and return the Colosseum’s flight case, which lives out in Connecticut at my mom’s house because I have no storage in New York City.
I finally decided to take the risk of moving the Colosseum without its flight case and it seems to have turned out ok but it is not easy and the operation makes me nervous. I hope I don’t have to do that again.
Long may it run.
In case people on here aren’t aware, the amp weighs 80kgs/175lbs! I cannot lift it, it took four of us to load it at Soundsmith and my two building guys to unload it.
I feel lucky to have Soundsmith so close to New York so I could get my amp fixed. I wouldn’t want to ship the amp to Denmark and back!
As an aside, I just don’t enjoy driving as much as I did when I was younger. Those parkways north of New York are beautiful, but they were built in the 1930s and have no shoulders.
Everybody is driving way over the speed limit, myself included, and, still, every once in a while a guy comes screaming up behind you like it’s the autobahn, and I’ve driven on the autobahn. I know how it looks in the rear view mirror when a car is gaining on you with great speed. At least on the autobahn, they leave their left blinker light on, which means you’d better move out of the way.
I’m going ahead with the purchase of the Niagara 5000 because the seller of my amp has decided that running with two of the 5000s works as well as running three of them on his massive Gryphon mono blocks and digital front end, and he has given me a good deal on one unit. I trust the guy, he really knows his stuff, and I am happy to have met him.
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I think this is the review you’re referring to:
https://www.hifiplus.com/articles/audiouest-niagra-7000-power-conditioner/
I can’t wait to see if it makes some difference. I don’t trust ConEd to not blow me up and we get a lot of electrical storms. There is no perfect protection, but I want something.
Thanks Larry
Yes that is the one.
Their reviews are usually reliable if you read them carefully and your friends experience is obviously a good guide. Nothing lost in having a home trial if that is possible.
I would be interested to read how it goes if you do try one.
In the meantime enjoy the music and the lifting of the Class D cloud!
Yes that is the one.
Their reviews are usually reliable if you read them carefully and your friends experience is obviously a good guide. Nothing lost in having a home trial if that is possible.
I would be interested to read how it goes if you do try one.
In the meantime enjoy the music and the lifting of the Class D cloud!
The 7000 weighs about forty pounds more than the 5000 because of the inclusion of an isolation transformer. I think it may be possible to get some hum from that so I’m going with the 5000.
There are twelve outlets on the US versions, four of which are for high current devices, such as amplifiers.
Like I mentioned, my amp seller is running two massive 200w Class A Mephisto monoblocks off of the 5000s. Front end components draw a constant voltage, I believe, and therefore can share a 5000 with one monoblock.
The thing that makes me laugh about the Gryphon Colosseum stereo amp is that the specs say it can draw a max of 2600w. A 20A circuit in the US can only supply 2400w, 20Ax120V. What’s the deal with that spec number? Are they talking about European versions of the amp?
Thanks.
Yeah, it would have been nice if the $1000 Class D amp had crushed the Gryphon, but, no, it didn’t. It’s wonderful that we have so many choices, and it’s great that we have small, lightweight, high power amps at reasonable prices, but there is nothing like the smoothness and naturalness of Class A amps.
I got attacked in some some other forum by a guy who said a $500 amp was as good as a $10k amp. I said that quality is correlated with price but that wasn’t accepted. I finally asked the guy if he had ever seen or heard a Class A amp and the answer was no, lol, he had only heard some Class xD.
Anyway, it’s good to be back here with you guys, haha.
Glad to hear the Colosseum is back home, up and running and putting a smile on your face. Can't offer much advice on the Niagra. Both the AQ and Torus units get great reviews. After what you've been through and the time it's taken, I would personally be leaning toward the units that offer isolation. JMHO.
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