Harman Kardon Citation 16A
A power amplifier that studio engineers and hi-fi collectors both reached for, and that the front panel still calls a "Citation 16."
Overview
The Citation 16A is a power amplifier from Harman Kardon's Citation line. It has a naming trap. The front panel says "Citation 16," but the amplifier that Studio Sound reviewed in September 1978 was the 16A. The magazine's review notes the discrepancy directly, saying the unit under test was the 16A "not the Citation 16 as the front panel testifies." Collectors learn this the hard way when they buy a "Citation 16" and find they've got the updated circuit.
That same review documents what separates the 16A from the earlier 16. The 16A brought decreased transient intermodulition distortion, Darlington output transistors, reduced crossover distortion, and no integrated circuits in the input stages. Those are real engineering changes, not a cosmetic refresh. There was also a variant called the Citation 16S, which is simply the version without the output level LED indicator on the front panel. So the family runs 16, 16A and 16S, and the 16A sits in the middle with the LED and the revised input stage.
The period record quotes power output at 150 watts per channel, minimum continuous into 8 ohms, according to Audio (November 1977, p.77). That figure comes from a review where the amplifier drove ADAM ANF10 monitors, which are small passive speakers. The reviewer observed that 175 watts a side is a lot of power for a speaker that size. The monitors only complained with very low frequencies at full power. That is less a knock on the amp than what happens when you feed 40 Hz at 175 watts into a seven-inch driver. The 16A was not a modest amplifier. It was built with headroom in reserve.
The Citation 16A also turns up in professional studios, not just the home hi-fi market. A Studio Sound index from December 1978 lists the "Harman/Kardon Citation-16A power amplifier" among the power amplifiers reviewed in that publication, dated 86/9 - September 1986 in the magazine's internal dating scheme - with Ca Va Studios in Glasgow noted alongside it. That is a studio installation credit, so the 16A was doing monitoring duty in at least one professional room. The same index lists it with BGW, HH and other power amplifiers.
On the used market, the 16A has stayed visible. A 1984 dealer listing from a Cambridge, Massachusetts retailer shows the Citation 16A among "latest used" components, priced at $289 against a list price of $429. That is a meaningful discount for a used unit in early 1984, and it puts the amplifier in the same dealer column as Levinson, McIntosh and Hafler gear. The listing also carried the standard dealer warranty language of the time, a 14-day unconditional money-back guarantee and no less than 60 days limited warranty. That was the dealer's promise, not the manufacturer's.
The 16A is not a rare amplifier the way a limited-run tube piece might be. Because of the front-panel mislabeling, anyone shopping for one needs to confirm which version they're looking at. The 16S, without the LED, is the easiest to tell at a glance. The 16A and the plain 16 take more care.
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