Wow, look at this fantastic pair of RCA Victor New Orthophonic amplifiers, made in Great Britain! They are absolutely gorgeous, but I wonder how they would sound? The model number of each amplifier is LMI-32116A and the seller says they are theatre grade amplifiers made for the home market. The seller says each amp only puts out 12 watts of output power, so the two of them together may not be as potent as my 1956 RCA Victor Mark I. They are very nice, however, and rather expensive at $4,200 for the pair. It would be interesting to borrow them for a few days to find out how they sound!

Look at how RCA lined up all the capacitors and resistors in these amps. Recapping would be a breeze.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/RCA-LMI-32216-P ... 231fa92fad

Seems to me that a pair of KT66s along with those hefty transformers should be good for 40 watts, not 12.

-David

Now, that is fairly potent.

nice but not four thousand dollars nice

They'd make interesting bookends. They look more like art than amps.

How long did RCA build things in the UK? Rolls Royces were built in Springfield, Mass from '26-'31 but it didn't work out very well. Buyers wanted the real deal--had to be British.

I wouldn't know, but RCA did have a division in the UK. They may have made Canadian models there as well, but I can't say for certain. I do know the Canadian models were quite different than the USA models.

Wanted that oil leak eh?

The cars were excellent quality and very successful with customers. They sold a lot of them. But RR lost money on every one, and when the 1929 crash wiped out the market for luxury cars the decision was made to close down the American operation.

-David

Those resistors and caps on the terminal block reminds me of the construction of RCA TV cameras of the time like the TK-31 and TK-41.

Very nice amps for sure, it would be interesting to see how they sounded.

Matt

Those are real beauties price aside. That power rating would be very conservative. With the right speakers I'm sure they would make a lot of good clean sound.

They sound absolutely wonderful.
But buying these amps. would be foolish:
The color is not correct.
Output tubes it not KT66.
There are still old capacitors in them (Hunts).
Seller is a little too smart, the amplifiers is only 300-400 U.S. dollars worth !
Here is a real RCA Orthophonic amplifier:

(Moderator's note: Reduced the picture to fit the page better. Original was way too wide...)

Unless they're biased pure class A . Then 12 watts is not unreasonable.