Been playing with my Phase 200, noticed a velocity gain switch on the back. What is velocity gain you might ask? After a little research, I found an old review from Popular Electronics that explained its purpose.
Way back in 1975, before anyone was talking about slew/transient induced distortion being caused by the slow response of feedback circuits, Mr. Carver allowed you to remove 5db of the feedback. Mr. Carver said some people think the amp sounds better that way. Of course, Mr. Hirsch said all that it did was raise the gain (.38 db) and raise the noise floor a bit from -93 db to -82 db referenced to 10 watts.
With my old industrially damaged ears, I do not hear much difference, but just the fact that Mr. Carver was even considering this shows just how far ahead of the curve he was in amp design!
