Bryston 3B-ST

Up for sale is a Bryston 3B-ST amplifier. Made to be equally at home in your audiophile system, a club, or a recording studio, the 3B-ST is a brutally honest amplifier. It will reveal details in your music, but also lay bare flaws in the recording, and the rest of your system. It’s a dual-mono solid state design, offering 120W of clean and rock solid power on each channel.

It works perfectly, and has more than 5 years left on Bryston’s transferable warranty. I rated this at a conservative 7/10. The last 8 pictures above show you every scuff. The worst scuffs are still so shallow that I had to run my fingers over them a few times to decide whether or not I could really feel them.

The amp includes a removable power cord, original packaging, a photocopy of the original manual, and digital copies of the schematics and other technical docs.

3B-ST Reviews

The 3B-ST amplifier was reviewed far and wide and referenced when reviewing other products. It was often described as far above its weight class: unmatched unless you were willing to spend thousands more. Many of the reviews and conversations have been swallowed by the entropy of the web, but here are a few for your consideration:

"My listening notes and sessions, then, reveal the Bryston 3B-ST to be not only a surprisingly powerful amplifier with strong dynamics, but also the equal of more expensive solid-state amplifiers in its ability to deliver powerful bass, wide dynamic contrasts, and involving vocal reproduction. Only in the areas of imaging and soundstaging did amplifiers costing more than four times as much begin to pull ahead of the 3B-ST." Larry Greenhill, Stereophile

"The response is very straight, with a slight amount of overshoot, rather than having a rounded corner. What this means is that Bryston amplifiers (at least the models we have for testing) reproduce complex waveforms in a precise and accurate way...Products with straight up and down square wave responses like the Bryston, will be more difficult to match. But when the match is made . . . wow!" John E. Johnson, Jr., Secrets of Home Theatre and High Fidelity

"There is a lot of competition in the $2000 List - 100/125 watt amp market, but it seems like every review I read about concerning another amplifier in this range, the reviewer seems to always compare the amplifier under review with the Bryston 3B-ST. This tells me it is the one to beat." Sugarbrie, 2600+ active threads in the Audiogon Forums

Specifications

Inputs: RCA unbalanced (sensitivity: 1V for full output) and XLR balanced (sensitivity: 2V for full output)
Power, per channel: 120W continuous into 8Ω, 200W continuous into 4Ω
Power, bridged mode: 400W continuous into 8Ω
Distortion: 0.007% at 120W, 20Hz-20kHz IM (60Hz+7kHz, 4:1, SMPTE method) or THD
S/N ratio: >106 dB below full output, 90 dB IHF
Slew rate: >60 V/µs
Damping factor: >500 at 20 Hz ref. 8Ω, equivalent to an output impedance of 0.016Ω.
Input impedance: 50k ohms unbalanced, 20k ohms balanced. Polarity: non-inverting.
Warranty: 5 Years remaining on Bryston’s Transferable 20 Year Warranty
Dimensions: 19" (482.5mm) W by 5.25" (133mm) H by 9" (228mm) D. Weight: 22 lbs (10kg)