DAVID BERNING EA2-150B DAVID BERNING EA2-150B POWER AMP REVOLUTIONARY TUBE HYBRID

DAVID BERNING EA2-150B POWER AMP REVOLUTIONARY TUBE HYBRID DESIGN JUST SERVICED

This power amp is very rare - only a few were built. Schematics are available, and our local tech guru just finished tweaking this one and replacing a couple of resisters and caps. Power is rated at 150 watts per channel or better.

Inside could use some cleaning, all is performing properly but has cage residue and dust.. The tech who certified this sale ready said that based on the build quality it was in his opinion worth up to $1,500.

This amp was produced 1976-1978 and was very expensive at the time. Berning is still producing a limited number of components that can now run into the tens of thousands.

The best description of the sound of this amp is POWERFUL AND PURE.

In 1995, Dick Oisher of Stereophile had this to say: "It was back in the mid-'70s that David Berning made a name for himself in the Baltimore-Washington area as an avant-garde designer—someone with a truckload of fresh ideas about tubes. At the time, though Audio Research was starting to crank out pretty decent amplifiers, tube design was pretty much reduced to a rehash of the Williamson circuit and the Dynaco mod of the month.

Murray Zeligman introduced me to Dave Berning's creations. I remember driving out to Dave's house in Potomac one evening to look over an EA2-150 amp (which I later purchased). There was a cavernous basement filled with gear and a workbench against the wall. When Dave turned around to greet me, my jaw almost hit the floor: the guy looked liked he'd just finished high school. The "kid," however, was no technical juvenile. His circuitry knowledge was astounding, and the quality of workmanship was fully professional—far beyond the garage tinkering level. The EA2-150 was a copy of nothing; it represented an original and sophisticated design statement. Features such as variable feedback control and digital automatic bias adjustment were well ahead of their time.

Dave symbolizes for me the quintessential high-end designer: someone with a glint in his eye who pushes the art forward because of the desire to uncover the truth. Of course, the guy wants to make money, but this is secondary to the creative process. The art is not driven by business. You wouldn't go up to Van Gogh and say: paint me a $299 or a $499 painting. That's low-fi. Instead, allow the artist to express himself freely with a complete palette on a large canvas. If the result costs five kilobucks, so be it. No one has ever sold a ton of $5k amps, but that wasn't the point in the first place."

The EA2-150B listed here, was an updated design that was enclosed and also came with a faceplate, the original or 'A' model was open. The input stages are solid state and the output stages are tubes.

The methodology was briefly discussed in Stereophile in 1988: "Ever since it was recognized that the "tube sound" and the "solid-state sound" each had definite, characteristic strengths and weaknesses, electronics designers have sought ways of getting the best sound each had to offer while avoiding the weaknesses of both. Still, it took a surprisingly long time for anyone to realize that the best way of doing this might be hybridization-using tubes in combination with solid-state devices.
The first commercial attempt at this was, I believe David Berning's EA2-150 power amplifier, introduced during the early 1970s. This used solid-state devices in the voltage-amplifier and driver stages, and tubes for the output stages, the reasoning being that, while solid-state devices were "better than tubed ones in general" (a contention still argued), tubes were better suited for delivering the voltage signal required by electrostatic loudspeakers."

Obviously the amp works with any type of speakers, the point being this one is very stable and very well built. It weighs -in in the neighborhood of 90 lbs.

Regardless, this is one great sounding amp, a true design classic.

Will be packed well to arrive safely. Pickup is always good if you can.
Shipping to the 48 contiguous states only.