EAR 529 500 watt Monoblocks

EAR is short for Esoteric Audio Research, based in England. The company is owned by my old friend from South Africa, Tim de Paravicini. I met Tim in 1970 at one of the top high end retail outlets in Johannesburg. At the time he was doing all the service work for them. It was natural for us to be drawn together as we both had this intense love for electronics and especially amplifiers. We became firm friends until Tim left to work for Luxman in Japan in 1972.

One of the amplifiers which EAR produced in the 1980's was the EAR 529, a 500 watt monoblock tube amplifier. Apparently only 12 pairs were manufactured but I cannot verify the exact number. The links below detail the work I performed on the extremely nasty looking amplifiers I received and the pictures show the results.

Whilst the EAR 529's are very good amplifiers, they are not as good as my McIntosh MI350 monoblocks about which you can read at the link below. (Click picture or text)

McIntosh MI350

I did measurements on both amplifiers and the McIntosh's are clearly superior in measured performance and listening to them in a double blind listening test, the three impartial listeners picked the McIntosh amps each time.

Unfortunately many of the files from the AP of the EAR529s were mislaid so only some Power vs THD and Frequency response measurements are shown.

Click on the thumbnails below to see an expanded view