Which oldie's transistors amps was sounding best ?

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my two favorite vintage SS amps are the Sony TA-3120A and the McIntosh 250.

The TA-3120A has a nice layout and is pretty easy to work on. A cap job really helped after ~40 years. Yikes, I am getting old since this amp is newer (barely) than I am.

The Mac wins on looks and the use of autoformers is, uh, an interesting design decision. This is one of the "tubier" SS amps I've heard - it's the poor man's MC240.

Of course a Dynaco ST-80 with a full cap job isn't a bad amplifier either - sound more modern than I expected. Not really uber-fidelity, but a fun piece to play with.
 
If only very large caps did not have such high distortion and our modern "improved" speakers did not insist on dropping below 4 ohms
As the output capacitor has half rail dc bias, there is not much non-linear distortion. What you do have is rising LF output impedance interacting with the speakers impedance in the bass. Unfortunately most modern speakers are reflex with a double hump impedance with a minimum in between. This leads to a bass suck out and two LF peaks. This can easily be fixed by increasing the output capacitor value ~x2 to x4
 
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