I purchased this on Audiogon in excellent condition a few years ago and never used it until recently, to demo it.
This amp looks almost new and of course sounds that way, with a dark black, quiet background. Excellent sound-staging as well.
If you are into ultra detail, then this is not the system for you. If you love music and analog sound, this amp is hard to beat for the money. I've used all types of digital amps, Odyssey, tube amps of all calibers (including the vk60 monos) and this amp still sounds better than 90% of the so-called latest audiophile gear.
Paypal add 3% please, OR send a bank check. Buyer pays shipping.
Rated 9/10 for cosmetics, given it's age 8/10. Face place is dark black and no visible scratches or dings.
From balanced dot com:
"The Balanced Audio Technology VK-200 offers unparalleled musicality and power in a compact design that integrates easily into the finest systems and living arrangements. Fully balanced topology and a simple, direct signal path yield a superbly transparent instrument that breathes life into music.
Universal authority
The VK-200 delivers 100 watts per channel into 8 Ω loads and 200 watts per channel into four-ohn loads. Yet the VK-200's real-world performance transcends even these powerful ratings. Many supposedly higher-powered amplifiers sound closed-in or compressed in direct comparison. The reason is simple. By using only the fastest N-channel devices in a two-stage, single-ended bridge design - without the debilitating effects of negative feedback - the VK-200 responds instantaneously to changes in its input signal.
Direct connection
A power amplifier by definition must have at least one gain stage. Most amplifiers, however, are designed with three to five gain blocks as well as negative feedback that recycles the input signal through an infinite loop. The balanced Audio Technology VK-200, by contrast, approaches the ideal of a direct connection. Engineered to use only two gain stages, without feedback, in an innovative single-ended bridge topology, the VK-200 frees the signal to give the listener a direct emotional connection to the music.
Superb construction
The VK-200 features the exemplary build quality offered throughout the Balanced Audio Technology line. One look inside reveals an elegant design with none of the extraneous wiring that compromises the sound of lesser power amplifiers. The substantial power transformer of the VK-200 is fully encapsulated and shielded to preserve a low noise floor. Custom oil-filled signal capacitors are used in critical locations. The net result is a balanced power amplifier that combines innovative circuit design and meticulous execution to deliver performance that is truly greater than the sum of its parts.
Effortless coherence
Music through the VK-200 reveals an effortless coherence, a transparency and verve, that defy traditional categorization. Power. Delicacy. Detail. Harmonic integrity. The VK-200 reconciles these qualities in a synergy unique among amplifiers in its class. Listen to the VK-200 at your BAT audio specialists and hear a balance of virtues you never thought possible."
From Fi magazine"
"The $3495 VK-200 (a 100-watt-per-channel solid-state design that is–like all BAT designs–fully balanced) is one of those amplifiers that seems not to know that its power is supposed to be limited. It soars as the music does. And this is a wonderful thing.
Another thing about the 200: it doesn’t sound like your typical transistor amp. That’s not to say it has tubey colorations, but that it’s got very finely structured grain, it’s warm and easy in overall sound, it’s robust in the midbass, and yes, dynamically it has the free-flowing effortlessness and authority that I, at least, associate with higher powered vacuum tube amps.
No doubt this is due to a massive power supply.
What’s curious about the BAT sound is that, though it is not as finely detailed–in the sense of whisper-fine low-level resolution–as other electronics I’ve lived with (like ARC’s LS-10 linestage, the Pass Aleph 3, or Gryphon Antileon amps), it did show me new things in records I know very very well. F’r instance, on the Classic Records LP reissue of Kind Of Blue, I never before had such a remarkable sense of the height and space occupied by the various instruments, nor of the relationship of Jimmy Cobb’s cymbals and drums to each other. Geoff Poor, BAT’s Director of Sales, attributes this to the exceptional timbral resolution the BAT designs have. That may well be, but I believe that it’s that combined with the dynamic ease I described above, along with low noise and grain, which allows this gear to paint such 3-D images. And listening to CDs yielded the same sensation."
