fCentaur II 500 is an unexpected but very happy result of our upgrade from the original Centaur to Centaur II. When they designed the upgrade, their »dream team » ended up with an amplifier they knew could deliver far more than its rated power, if only the power transformer could provide enough voltage. As an experiment, they installed one of the transformers from their Reference Series Hercules II into a Centaur II Stereo chassis. The experiment worked even better than they imagined, producing Centaur II 500 : a stereo amplifier with the same power rating as two Centaur II monoblocks.