I met James Bongiorno at the Las Vegas CES show in 1994. James was there as a guest speaker if I remember correctly. Not really sure. What I do remember is that he would come in before the show opened and play piano. Good piano, jazz piano. He was kind, pleasant and loved talking music and hi-fi. He was also generous with his time, which can’t be said for many audio celebrities.
My conversations with James, really shaped the way I began to look at audio and rethink things. When I proudly told him about my McIntosh system, he pleasantly smiled and said something to the affect as ‘that’s nice’.
I mentioned to him that I too was a musician and his immediate reply was, ‘then you ought to know a good system when you hear it.’
What are your favorite amps? He said that he really still enjoys listening to his GAS line of equipment. ‘AmpZilla to Grandson’. Grandson?, I remarked. “You didn’t design Grandson”. “It’s my design, it was in the can before I left Great American Sound. It was released after my departure, and I didn’t get credit because they didn’t want press for someone who wasn’t at the company any longer.” “All three amps and preamps are my design”.
James of course went on to many more great designs founding SUMO, and Spread Spectrum Technologies, with AmpZilla 2000. If you Google James, you will see that he was involved in Marantz, Hadley, SAE, Sequerra, and Dynaco just to name a few. Speaking of his amplifier designs, he had no modesty at all, which makes me smile. He was a genius and everyone knew it.
Fast forward a decade or so and I was photographing the home of a designer. I walked over to an equipment stand and noticed a Linn Sondek LP12 with an SAE 3009 tone arm. Further inspection revealed a Mark Levinson JC-2 preamp and Kenwood L-07 Monoblock Amplifiers. After admiring the clients system and talking hi-fi, I mentioned that I met James. He smiled and said, I have one of his amps. Used it for years. You can have it. I will look for it this weekend. And sure enough, the next time I saw him, he gave me his GAS Grandson amplifier. When he handed it to me, he said, “this is best sounding amplifier I have ever heard, enjoy.”
Several years go by and I was cleaning up my basement and came across the amp. Hmmm, no one is home, maybe I can try this little guy out. So upstairs, a quick dusting and then pulling out the stereo stand to remove the Citation 16A and hook up the little GAS Grandson. Truthfully, I wasn’t expecting much at all, it’s only rated at 40WPC, but it is rated down to 2 ohms where it will deliver 120WPC. Impressive. Heavy little beast too, with a huge transformer hanging out back.
All plugged in, no noise, a good thing. I put on Jennifer Warrens Bird on a Wire, a massively overplayed song, but outstanding recording. I couldn’t believe this little guy! Whoooaaaa. Vinnie’s toms sounded like thunder, what is this? The grip this amp had on my Definitive Technology BP10’s (from the 1990 CES Show, more on this pair later), was unbelievable! tight, low deep bass, smooth mids and crystal highs. Wow, I listened and listened and listened. The Citation 16A, a tremendous amp in its own right never went back in the rotation.
I will continue with more about Grandson when I feature its proper mate the Thalia preamp in another post. Don’t let the 40WPC fool you, Grandson is an outstanding amplifier!
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