Conrad Johnson Evolution 2000 Power Amplifier [Sold]

Description

Conrad Johnson Evolution 2000 Power Amplifier

This amp works perfectly and sounds great! We brought this in to drive difficult speaker loads and it does that with ease. But it isn’t a ‘brute’ amp only, it has the delicacy and finesse that is typical of Conrad Johnson products. The Conrad Johnson Evolution 2000 Power Amplifier was built as a ‘cost no object’ project by CJ and designed to compete with the very best amps on the market.

I would describe this amp as somewhere between the classic Conrad Johnson sound of the 80’s and the better current generation ARC products. It has punch and vibrancy with great detail and throws a huge soundstage, front to back and side to side. Images have space around them and there’s a great sense of ambience retrieval.

It isn’t warm by classic CJ standards but it has that tube presence and richness of tone. The Conrad Johnson Evolution 2000 Power Amplifier was built in the 90’s and is classed as a hybrid amp, with tube input stage and Mosfet outputs.

CJ made a couple hundred or so of these beasts then stopped making them due primarily to the cost of parts and production. Nowadays this would easily be a $25,000 power amp, perhaps more.

We purchased this amp from a reputable dealer, Audio Exchange in Richmond. Their service tech gave it the once over and installed a $400 set of NOS Jan tubes (this is the price I was told, I haven’t checked).

Condition is good for its age, with some marks here and there but pretty clean. There’s a few marks on the very bottom of the faceplate which are hard to capture on camera.

The main image is the actual product for sale, the picture of the internals is a stock picture I found online – just look at it by the way! They don’t make them like this anymore!

If you’re worried about service/support, you needn’t be. CJ support and repair all their vintage gear and there’s also ex-Conrad Johnson tech Bill Thalmann who can service and upgrade older models.

I want to sell this locally. It’s too heavy to ship, though if there are no takers locally then I may change my mind. I’m happy to deliver within a couple hundred miles or so of 23920, so if someone were to meet me that would open up a reasonable travel distance.

From Conrad Johnson’s website:

The Evolution 2000 was a genuinely unique design drawing on the many year’s experience conrad-johnson had with both vacuum tube and solid-state circuits.

The EV2000 uses MOSFETs for output devices and vacuum tubes for the input stage making the EV2000 a truly hybrid design.

It was a straightforward response to the challenge of producing a true zero-feedback power amplifier. Since only square-law valves are deployed in the EV2000, only second order distortion products are produced. Odd order distortion components, which are most noticeable and objectionable to the human ear, are virtually non-existent. Triode vacuum tubes were selected to provide all of the voltage gain. Current gain is provided by two stages of complimentary MOSFET source followers, the final stage consisting of five-pairs of high current devices for a nearly unlimited capacity to deliver current into reactive loudspeaker loads. High current delivery was facilitated by a massive, oversized, dedicated power transformer (nearly 50 lbs.) used for the solid state output devices. The MOSFET output stage eliminated the bandwidth limitations and phase shift associated with output transformers, and at the same time achieved a much lower output impedance than would be possible with a vacuum tube output stage.

The EV2000 offered the tonal integrity of the finest vacuum tube amplifiers combined with the speed and detail of superior transistor designs. Individual voices and instruments are faithfully reproduced and remain tightly focused on the soundstage no matter how complex the musical passage.

Features:

Inputs / Outputs

• power switch
• left and right RCA input jacks
• left and right output jacks (5 way binding posts)

 

Specifications:

• Power Output – 200 watts per channel from 20Hz to 20KHz with no more than 1% THD or IMD, both channels driven into 8 ohms.
• Input Sensitivity: 900mV to full power
• Response: 20Hz to more than 20kHz , +0, -.5dB
• S/N Ratio: 96 dB relative to max output

Mechanical:

• Dimensions: 22D x 19W x 10H inches
• Total weight: 114 lbs.

Download Owner’s Manual