Sound, sound, sound.

Build quality a little shaky...my source dial only turns to the right (of course, you can change inputs with the remote).

Listen, I don't want to bother you with a bunch of comments that have already been made about the GFP-750. I only have one worthwhile thing to add: Get rid of the supplied lamp-quality power cord and get yourself into something like a Harmonic Technology AC-11 ($180 for 2 meters normally, or $162 from Craig at getpods@aol.com). Not that this is the only worthwhile power cord in it's price class; doubtless, there are many others. The point is, the sheer clarity of your GFP-750 will GO THROUGH THE ROOF when you replace the standard power cord with a decent aftermarket version. Midrange now sounds incredible, bass hits with more slam AND precision, and the high end enjoyed similar improvements. I'm talking about obvious, instantaneous enhancements. Seriously, if you can afford a little financial hit, you should really get rid of that lamp cord Adcom gives you and upgrade. I promise you, as someone with personal experience with the GFP-750, that it will definitely be worth it.

Similar Products Used:

None

Sound, sound, sound.

Build quality a little shaky...my source dial only turns to the right (of course, you can change inputs with the remote).

Listen, I don't want to bother you with a bunch of comments that have already been made about the GFP-750. I only have one worthwhile thing to add: Get rid of the supplied lamp-quality power cord and get yourself into something like a Harmonic Technology AC-11 ($180 for 2 meters normally, or $162 from Craig at getpods@aol.com). Not that this is the only worthwhile power cord in it's price class; doubtless, there are many others. The point is, the sheer clarity of your GFP-750 will GO THROUGH THE ROOF when you replace the standard power cord with a decent aftermarket version. Midrange now sounds incredible, bass hits with more slam AND precision, and the high end enjoyed similar improvements. I'm talking about obvious, instantaneous enhancements. Seriously, if you can afford a little financial hit, you should really get rid of that lamp cord Adcom gives you and upgrade. I promise you, as someone with personal experience with the GFP-750, that it will definitely be worth it.

Similar Products Used:

None

Completely transparent, well built, bargain for the price

None for the price

I've had my 750 preamp for a couple months now. It sounds simply amazing. If you think it sounds bad, I am sorry to say that the problem is not the preamp, but your other components. The 750 is pretty revealing and will let you know exactly how your system sounds.

I've had zero reliability problems. Build quality is outstanding. This is my fifth Adcom product and I've never had a complaint about quality.

Read the review in Stereophile. The reviewer could hear no difference between the 750 and a $6000 Mark Levinson. It cracks me up when people on this site say that this pre (or any other equipment) sounds bad, when all published reviews say otherwise...do they honestly think they can review equipment better than professional reviewers who listen to music all day on many different systems? I think not.

What can I say, this product is truly worthy of Stereophile Class A status. It definitely made me want to upgrade my whole rig to match the sound quality of the 750.

I paid $975 new for a new 750 on eBay, which is much lower than the $1356 I would have paid in CA (incl tax).

Clean, open midrange, extended highs, extremly neutral, good bass definition.

Quality

Excellent sounding unit, if you can tolerate the quality. Make sure that Adcom has gotten over all Q.C. woes before you drop $1250 on this one. My 1st unit just wouldn't turn on any longer (died) after a couple of months. However, since the unit sounded so good, I returned it for an exchange. The 2nd unit did not send a stereo signal to my amplifier (mono only). I give up and am now looking to return this one and exchange it for a Sunfire Tube Preamp or a Bryston BP-20 Preamp.

Sound quality is at the top of the list of important matters when purchasing audio equipment. However, for my money, quality is equally as important. I simply want to just hear the music and not make frequent trips to a dealer playing equipment musical chairs. Although this is an excellent sounding unit (when it works), I can't possibly give it any better than 1 star in each category. We consumers must stick together and continue to protect one another from this type of inexcusable quality.

Similar Products Used:

None

I bought this 13 months ago, and it has been very reliable. I must have gotten mine before they had all the QC problems. This preamp is incredibly neutral, and operation is smooth and simple. I like the elegant simplicity of the face plate and the high quality feel of the controls.Before warming up, passive mode (HURRAY ADCOM!) is slightly smoother than active. But, after about a half hour, there is very little difference. Looks to me like Adcom has come very close to achieving that "piece of wire - with gain" quality - AND at a very affordable price. (I am very young for an audio enthusiast. Therefore, also quite poor. After buying my dealer's demo version of the 5802, I went back several days in a row looking for a preamp that I could afford. I was fixing to buy the bottom of the line Rotel, when my dealer took pity on me and sold me this unit - brand new - at his cost!!!!!!! This was the best experience I have had buying anything, and I will drive the 180 miles out of my way - as I have now moved - to buy all my audio gear from him!)

world-class transparency, dynamics, tonality and soundstaging; silent background; HT throughput; passive option; balanced inputs/outputs; ridiculously cheap

annoyingly bright LED indicators

Once again we have a case of a truly world-class product panned for the wrong reasons. This preamp is startlingly transparent, meaning it's just gonna show how bad the associated gear is. Stereophile has this product as a *Class A* component (see full review in their online archives) even though it costs a mere fraction of its competition--and it's true competitors really are the megabuck preamps. This preamp is about as close to sounding like nothing that I've heard, especially in passive mode (if your assoicated components have properly matched gain and impedance). It doesn't sound like tubes, neither does it add any solid state colorations. It just sounds like nothing...meaning your source and amp had better be top-notch. The bad reviews here are reflecting that. This piece could grace multi-kilobuck systems with no problem.

I bought this preamp after extensive in-home auditions in the system listed below. Note that this piece has a brilliant home theater bypass function, which allows separate music and home theater signal chains for people who have room for only one system. Plus everything is operable via the included remote control. There's also a balanced signal path. This piece not only gets a hearty thumbs up, but gets my vote as one of the all-time great audiophile bargains. Note that I can't comment on reliability except to say I've had mine for about 4 months without a hitch.

System:
Adcom GFP-750
Bel Canto Design DAC-1
Denon DVM-3700
Denon AVR-4800 (surround processing only)
EAD PowerMaster 1000
Maggie 1.6/MGCC1/10.1
Rel Storm III

Similar Products Used:

Bryston BP-25; Rouge Audio 99; VTL 2.5

Very VERY neutral, excellent soundstage

none.

This David character obviously has a hidden agenda, he has trashed several other Adcom pieces of equipment here.

First of all, don't assume an audio dealers setup is done right. Our local high end Krell B&W Martin Logan dealer "BUZZ Jenson's sound advice" wouldn't know a soundstage if it jumped up and bit them. You would hope a pair of Monolith III's driven by a Krell FPB-600 or Mono 250's and a KRC-3 would sound good. NOT. Now I won't go and trash the FPB-600 or the ML's based on what I heard at a dealer. I have only been to 3 or 4 dealers anywhere that know what they are doing when it comes to room setup. One gets a better sound out of a pair of $1000 monitors and a integrated tube amp than the local mega dealer.

The Adcom is truely a baragin. Of course you must match a passive pre to your system, but if it works, it works wonderfully.

Similar Products Used:

Bryston BP-20

This is terriffic product. When I see a review such as Dave's below, I understand why people complained in the Absolute Sound about novice reviews on the internet. I mean, give me a break!

This preamp offers superb performance and is an outstanding value. The Adcom replaced a McCormack Micro Line Drive in my system, which I used in passive mode for about 2 years. I was very happy with the performance and quality of the McCormack, but it lacked remote control and the dual volume control made setting the balance for optimum soundstaging very inconvenient. I became really interested in the Adcom after reading Wes Phillips' rave review in the March 99 Stereophile.
I am elated with the performance of the GFP-750! In its *active* mode, the Adcom is the clearly the equal to the McCormack run in passive mode in terms of transparency, detail, harmonic and timbral accuracy, etc. Against the McCormack run in active mode, the Adcom wins hands down. It outperforms the passive McCormack in terms of dynamics- imparting music and vocals with more presence, drive, pace, rythm, and the sense of you-are-there "aliveness". The GFP-750 has a more harmonically rich presentation compared to the passive McCormack, which can sound a little "thin" at times. Once broken in, it adds these qualities without the slightest sense of brightness or grain. Upon first listening, however, and for the first 30-50 hours, the GFP-750 did come across as a noticeably "bright and etched" compared to the McCormack-which had me worried about my invesment. But with some patience, this character disappeared, with a concomitant improvemenst in bass impact and soundstaging. And, of course, a flip of a switch puts the Adcom into passive operation, but I felt absolutely no compulsion to use this feature. Putting the Adcom in my system made me run out and buy a bunch of new CDs just to revel in new musical experiences.

Besides the sonic improvements, the Adcom offers remote volume and balance control, the latter being very underappreciated by many audiophiles. Using the remote balance, it is very nice to be able to fine-tune the soundstage for differenct recordings or when using my cartridge/turntable source. The passive operation mode bypasses the balance control, however. The GFP-750 also offers two more inputs than the McCormack and balanced operation and input/outputs as well. The unit has a hefty feel, with smoothly operating controls, It has a satisfying appearance that projects an image of high build quality and pride of ownership.

Complaints? All ergonomic. The keys for volume control should be better integrated with those for the balance control. These controls are not intuitive and are difficult of use in low lighting or the dark. Adcom would do well to emulate the "compass" configuration used on the remote for the Acurus RL-11 preamp. I also wish that Adcom would have included LED markers on the volume and balance knobs for visual confirmation of settings. Finally, the remote has to be pretty accurately aimed at the unit for it to respond.

These criticisms are essentially nit picks. The Adcom GFP-750 is a superb stereo preamp- probably close to or the equal of the best available (including tube-based designs), as Wes Phillips and other reviewers in Audio and Fi have concluded. And what a value! I bought a very slightly used demo unit from Kief's Audio/Video (a great mail order outfit, by the way) for $899! No matter what level of components that you have, if you are looking for a remote controlled stereo preamplfier, leave your preconceived notions about Adcom behind, and try out one these things. Highly recommended.

System:
Adcom GFP-750/McCormack MLD preamplifiers
McCormack DNA-0.5 amplifier with SMc Audio Revsion A upgrage
Sony CDP-XA7ES CD player
Rega Planer 3 table w/AudioTechnica ML-150 cartridge
NHT 2.9 speakers
Velodyne FSR-12 subwoofer
Ted's Excellent Cable Vitality speaker cables (this stuff is great-try it-much better than the TaraLabs 1000 prime that I was using before, check out www.tedsexcellentcable.com)
Kimber SilverStreak interconnects

I would burnin this preamp on a few days and then listen to it critically. I would also favor it with the best cables.
(It sounds like one of the reviewers may have had a defective unit. According to the store I bought it from, they did have a run of defective units but ADCOM seems to be on top of this and their sevice returns these unit in better shape than they were delivered.)

It is a winner. Less is more.