Quad 303

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Latteman
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Quad 303

Unread post by Latteman »

Hi
Any quad lovers out there
It’s an itch I’ve been planning to scratch since early 90’s
Does it have a characteristic sound

(I’m building some speakers and they are pretty inefficient so wondered about a 303 as a tweeter amp to share load)
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Lindsayt
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Re: Quad 303

Unread post by Lindsayt »

Years ago, at the North London Bake-Off event, organised by Richard Dunn, a Quad 303 was one of the items that made an appearance in the Amplifier Room. It sounded OK for the relatively low price paid for it by the owner. OK, as in it sounding like a run of the mill solid state amplifier.
My impression was that there are other solid state amplifiers that sound a bit better focused. There were also amps that sounded noticeably worse than the 303 at that bake-off, including a matchbox sized Class D and a Rega integrated, that sounded so woolly that I wondered if it had drifted out of spec.

It all depends what else you can buy for the same or less money than a 303.
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Latteman (Mon Mar 01, 2021 6:19 pm)

Daniel Quinn
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Re: Quad 303

Unread post by Daniel Quinn »

Its got op amps and protection as part of the circuit . It sounds ok ,but they colour the sound.
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Latteman (Mon Mar 01, 2021 8:55 pm) • Lindsayt (Tue Mar 02, 2021 12:59 am)

OrangeFixie
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Re: Quad 303

Unread post by OrangeFixie »

Sorry if this is too late to help, but my dad had a 33/303 years ago and (surprisingly) replaced it with a relatively cheep Rotel amp because in comparrison the Quad sounded woolly and muffled. NVA came along a couple of years later...
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Latteman (Thu Mar 04, 2021 11:36 am)

Bencat57
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Re: Quad 303

Unread post by Bencat57 »

An original fully serviced and up to specification 303 can sound what can only be described as nice it will be a familiar sound to many of a certain age and will be easy to listen to for long periods without any fatigue . There are a huge number of really poor amplifiers out there that will sound much worse.

You can get 303 units upgraded with better parts and settings by the likes of Fidele Audio DADA etc and all of these will sound much closer to current generations of power amplifier but they will in my view lose the charm of the original . Almost certainly more accurate but not as musical .

Using one in good order as the treble amp only in a bi amp set up would be fine and it would be more than capable but please be aware that the 303 has quite low sensitivity inputs so you would need to balance this with the bass amp very carefully .

In my view as you are building the speakers I would instead make them active units do not add a crossover in the speaker just connect the Treble and Bass to the rear binding posts and buy a MiniDSP 24HD unit which you can feed either a digital or analogue signal and that will act as your active crossover then feed the four outputs to your two power amplifiers and you will get a much more dynamic and cleaner sound .

The above will sound top class but you could at a later date add DIRAC Live to the MiniDSP for about $199 and with a UMIK Mic (either borrowed or bought) you will take the sound to a very different level .
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Latteman (Thu Mar 04, 2021 5:13 pm)

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