PHASE LINEAR: Is the reputation deserved?

Actually, Phase Linear (often nicknamed Flame Linear) had much more of a reputation for self destruction than harming other components.

Phase Linear made a number of very good components, but too often QC issues caused problems when they were new... so much so, that my local dealer wouldn't deliver an unopened amp to you - the manager insisted that ALL Phase Linear components were tested before they would release them to their costumers! I seems the ones that survived a few weeks were likely to work indefinitely, so I don't think they were bad designs, just spotty construction. Yours has apparently survived all these years, so I guess you have a good one!

Simply having a powerful amp shouldn't cause any issues with driving even very sensitive speakers, assuming you don't have toddlers &/or drunks fiddling around with your volume controls! More power just allows you to also drive less sensitive speakers, but there's no real disadvantage in having more than enough to drive a more sensitive model and if you're nervous, you can always use smaller fuse in the output. Though an argument can be made for synergy, or one amp sounding "better" than another on a particular speaker, you could just as easily use that amp to run a Klipschorn, or an AR9.

Since you do now have such a powerful amp, you can consider almost any speaker that sounds good to your ears with little concern over being able to feed it well. IMO, that's the strongest argument for "monster" amps. In short, if you had a flea amp, I could tell you what you couldn't pair with it, but in the case of a big, stable amp like yours, the sky's the limit!

http://www.audiokarma.org/forums/showthread.php?t=600327

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