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I recently purchased a 600 watt amplifier made during the 1980's by Bipolar Electronic Systems in Livermore, California, and am looking for the specifications and schematics for the BES 850 amplifier.
Haven't been able yet to find out much about the amplifier or the company. The only mention of Bipolar Electronic Systems on the Internet is a passing reference that Barry Streets ran Bipolar Electronic Systems during the 1980's.
If anyone here can shed any light, it will be much appreciated.
Follow Ups:
If it is a Barry Streets design- You might reach out to Art Ferris- mentioned elsewhere in this thread-
Art, under the Audible Illusions brand offered a stereo 120 and there were plans for a mono 150 amp - both based on Barry's designs-
Good luck- should be a great amp.
Happy Listening
The Bipolar 850 is a Streets design, and like all Streets designs it seeks at the moment it was built to scale the heights of sonic perfection, or in the case of my amp, to repeat the journey for the one thousandth time with perhaps a few small twists and tweaks on the road along the way. Few Streets/Bipolar amps were built in the 1980's because they were designed and hand assembled locally in Livermore, CA, and sold locally. From handmade silver coated circuit boards to 1/2 inch copper platform, rich silver solder joints and NASA class shielded wiring, the guts of the Bipolar look as solid and clean today with all original components - as it did 30+ years ago.
I prefer a sound system that is transparent, detailed, fast, musical, clear, clean, and light with a hint of the depth of warmth and dimensionality. The Bipolar adds this warmth and dimensionality to my system. Today's best amps seem to reflect a slight heavy, thick sound with a hint of darkness floating within the interstices of the notes. Other amplifiers striving towards a sense of light, emit a unique signature sound but one not always reflective of a concert hall.
Just as vinyl expertly sound designed sounds better than any standard CDs produced after early 1990's, not to mention our analytically sterile and thin currently available MP3s, so too do vintage custom built amplifiers sound much better when residing within a compatible sound system. While there may be tons of discussions revolving around these topics and scarce science behind these words, may I remind all the sceptics out there - audio history not only measures forward steps but also serves as a measuring rod to mark backward detours.
Regarding the schematics for the Bipolar 850, I am resigned to the possibility that Barry Streets sold his designs, and therefore is not at liberty to disclose the schematics. The only avenue then that appears to remain open is for someone who is still in possession of the original schematics for the Streets/Bipolar 850 to contact me.
Appreciate all the responses to my thread, and especially yours. We are all here because we are curious, fascinated, absorbed, challenged, enticed by Sound, its theory, practice, appreciation, allowing us then to listen to the whispers coursing through the universe. Yes, the world is bipolar: sound and silence and everything in-between...
Thank you!
I have my Bipolar 850 paired with a Goldmund Mimesis preamp and Definitive Mythos Supertowers with active subwoofers using MIT HD Matrix 38 speaker cables. No weak bass here. As with most audio systems, especially high end components often get zinged due to weakness generated by another component. The Bipolar 850 is awesome!!!
...I borrowed one to audition back then.
I believe that was the amp HP said looked like a Campbell's soup can in his review.
Art Ferris (Modulus preamp fame) was the distributor so he put an ad for it in TAS with one of the Campbell's soup kids on top of it.
I thought the amp sounded great from the midrange on up, but the bass was a little weak.
...but you might try reaching him here:berrys2552@comcast.net
good luck.
Also at the link below, you will see a conversation with the real Barry Streets son discussing the amp. You should be able to contact his son and find out if any schematics are still extant.
Edits: 12/04/16 12/04/16
Awesome!!! Thank you so very much :-)
......or SES, if you prefer. There is some info floating around about the Streets model 950 that may help. Tha Absolute Sound may have reviewed the Bipolar 850 as well.
Good luck with the hunt.
Thanks! I'll follow the research path you suggest and see where it leads.
The reason this amplifier never went main stream is that it kept changing from Class A to Class B ... ;-)
Thank you so much for your reply. As a follow-up, please explain 'keeps changing from class A to class B'? Do you mean the design itself kept changing? Or do you mean that each amplifier would continually change internally from Class A to Class B? I suspect the later because of the following:
The day after receiving the BES 850 amp, I took a warm detailed transparent amp down to our local electronics shop where the owner w/ 35 yrs experience made some adjustments, including bringing the idle speed down to 1/4 volt, but in the end brought home a lifeless analytical cold amp with channel imbalanced.
So I'm thinking the BES 850 design is nonstandard, and I won't be able to find a shop who can fix it unless I find the schematics. So any understanding of how this amplifier was designed may be extremely helpful.
The Streets Electronic Systems 950 uses a fan, whereas the Bipolar Electronic Systems design uses heat sinks. So if I had to make a guess I would have thought that the Bipolar amps were a design advancement over the Streets 950 amp design. So I would have been wrong?
Captured again by bipolar gestalt. ;-)
Just a little "Bipolar" humor ...
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