Phase Linear 700B

Completely rebuilt by a good man named Edward Blackwood. Here is his site.
http://web.archive.org/web/20071208055327rn_1/hometown.aol.com/PhaseTek/

The 700b had been left to me from someone years ago and has always been somewhat of a pipe dream to me. I had found someone to work on it here in portland and they couldn't fix it so i started searching the interwebs about this heavy thing. That's how i found Edward. Ed was an easy going fellow, amp smarts to the point of making your head spin kinda guy. All of our transactions were via email and telephone conversations. The great thing about this whole thing is that he lived close. Mailing this 65lb amp wasn't going to be cheap. I was in no hurry for this thing to be rebuilt because i had no idea if it could be done.
So i sent it to him. Several weeks later and about $300 in it arrived on my doorstep looking almost bran new. WTF! Amazing.
I tested it right away on a the 2x15, 400w, 8ohm cabinet right away. Loud, clear, and i was astonished.
If you ever come across any old Phase Linear stuff really consider investing in it. If it doesn't work, scrape some money together and talk to Ed. He is awesome.

Here is a copy of the Wikipedia article. It gives a little history.


Phase Linear was an audio equipment manufacturer founded by Bob Carver in 1970. While primarily known as a power amplifier company it also produced several innovative preamplifers, tuners and the Andromeda loudspeaker.

History
Its first location was a small building at 405 Howell Way in Edmonds, Washington. The first amplifier produced was the Phase Linear 700. With 350 watts per channel it soon became the standard amplifier used in recording studios, sound reinforcement companies, professional musicians and audiophiles. It had a retail price of $749.00, or a little more than a dollar a watt. The design was notable for its brushed aluminum front panel and large dual VU meters, and was made possible by the new high-power transistors designed for the high voltages of auto electronic ignitions. That original amp was replaced by the 700B and the 700 II. All of those designs were made to have extra power to run loudly the relatively inefficient sealed-box speakers like the Acoustic Research AR3/AR3a. The next product was the Phase Linear 4000 Series Auto-correlation Pre-Amplifier introduced in 1973 and manufactured through 1978. It retailed for $700.00 at the end of its life. It was a design collaboration by Bob Carver and Bill Skinner. The second amplifier released was the Phase Linear 400 with 200 watts per channel. It shared the same distinctive brushed aluminum, dual VU meters front panel style as the 700. It retailed for just under $500[1].

The company was known for the most powerful audio amplifiers of the era led by the Phase Linear D-500 introduced in 1978. It was a stereo power amplifier delivering 505 watts of clean (typically < 0.1% total harmonic distortion over 20 Hz–20 kHz) RMS power per channel. It had a retail price of $1395.

The company would later be bought by Pioneer Electronics and Bob Carver would go on to found Carver Corporation in 1979. Pioneer added a high end cassette-tape deck designed in house and CD players designed by Kyocera to the Phase Linear line. But by that time the company was in decline due to the increasing cost of research and development, and the departure of founder Carver. In the 1980s Phase Linear was sold by Pioneer to Recoton and is currently only producing car audio equipment. Bob Carver later switched from Carver to Sunfire taking the design and the price-tags with him.

There continues to be a loyal following of some of the older products. Many electronic parts are still available for repairs. Mechanical parts such as switches, meters and hardware are scarce.