Adcom 5.1 separates - any experience?

I'm considering upgrading my system in the next few months. I have a puny (but sufficient for my apartment) Denon receiver, but am considering switching to separates. My cousin has nothing but good things to say about his Adcom stereo amp & preamp/tuner, but I want 5.1 capabilities. I've seen the GFA-7605 amplifier coupled with the GTP-830 preamp/tuner. Looks like that will be about a $2,000 investment. Does anyone have experience with or knowledge of Adcom home theater components?

 

I have an Adcom GFA-5400 amp. It has been used to drive everything from subwoofers to Martin Logan electrostatics. I can't say enough good things about it - inexpensive, very nice sonic signature, no extraneous noises whatsoever... it's the sonic equivalent to a mutt. It won't cost you that much, and will give you YEARS of happiness (although some people may cringe when people ask about its breed).

 

I drive my very ineficient AR-2's and AR-3's with an Adcom GFA-5400, and its great! It powers them very well with no distortion. It is my monitor amp in my recording studio. I really like the way it sounds. As Fjhuerta said, its really a wonderfull little amp. I also have an Adcom CD player (GCD-750) and its great too! All Adcom products are great bang for the buck!

 

I totally agree with this. But it wasn't always like this. I remember back in the early days of Adcom their reliablility was poor. Many, many failures due to bad solder joints. But they've been good for well over ten years now.

It seems like Adcom basically replaced Hafler as the leader of 'big bang for the buck' honors, and in many ways far exceeded that.

 

There is one thing a bit dissapointing about the Adcom HT stuff.

The GTP-880 has nice BNC component connectors, but it appears to have no component upswitching. I think that is a pretty important feature these days. That means non component sources will not output through the component outputs, and you will have to run separate Svideo or composite video to your monitor, and then switch monitor inputs depending on what source you are watching.

 

That's very interesting. I'm familiar with that problem, since my cheap Denon doesn't upswitch either (I think the upper end Denon 5.1 receivers do, however), but I was hoping that my next HT unit would do it.

Thank you everyone for the good words on Adcom and for the caveat.