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RE: Great Fisher integrated?

Posted by geezerrocket on March 29, 2014 at 08:39:14

In Reply to: Great Fisher integrated? posted by Mossback on March 28, 2014 at 22:01:04:

I have owned a few "Great Fisher Integrated" amps as well as the 500c, 500b, and 400 receivers. While they were all good sounding units, they were not great...... The Sherwood S-5000 is great!

Mikey is (as always) right on with his aassessment of the Sherwood S-5000 compared to others. I do not know about the S-5000 with 7868's or 7591's, or the S-5000 mk2 as I have not heard them.

I have had several vintage tube integrated amps over the years. Most all of them rebuilt/restored with good parts by well regarded techs and I can tell you this; None of them sounded as good as my stock S-5000 (currently on Mikey's bench getting the business).

Most recently I had a Fisher X-202-B that had been completely rebuilt by a very reputable tech along with a complete new tube set from Jim McShane; This thing couldn't compare to the S-5000. Does this mean that the Fisher cannot be enjoyable to listen to? NO.

I love baseball, and while I enjoy watching our local minor league team (Fargo/Moorhead Red Hawks) play on a nice summer night - It ain't Miguel Cabrera & Joe Mauer at Target field in Minneapolis. That's how I would summarize the difference between the Fisher and the Sherwood.

I could not even begin to tell you the technical reasons for the S-5000 sonic superiority as that is clearly beyond my grasp and better left to experts such as the aforementioned Mr. Samra (Mikey), and Eli Duttman. But, I can tell you from a enthusiasts perspective that the S-5000 sounds better in every meaningful way to every other amp I have owned.
Keeping in mind I do not ask this amp to operate out of its comfort zone by driving Magnepans or Thiels etc....

I recently found a very clean S-5000 with owners manual, schematic, in its original box and paid around $800 for it (7189 outputs, 5 preamp tubes, UL transformers). Many would consider this way too much to pay for a old amp, however, when you consider that it will hand modern tube integrateds such as, Prima Luna, Jolida etc. their ass(s), well, it's a bargain!

Understand that all this is nothing more than one mans' opinion. Good, better & best is, as we all know subjective, YMMV.

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