Now that my storm damage claim is close to being settled, I am looking at spending $800 or less to get my system back up and running.
I have an Adcom GFA 5006 6 channel bridged into 3 for 175 watts for the mains and center. The 2 channnel Adcom that blew up was 65 watts for the 2 surrounds.
I don't need a replacement 2 channel with 200 watts for the surrounds. I think it's overkill.
I could get the 7075 and just use 2 channels for the surrounds (too bad it can't be bridged) and although it leaves me with flexibility later, although 70 watts wouldn't be sufficient for my mains if I wanted to use it as my primary amp down the road. Ideally another Adcom 5006 would be my choice because of bridging flexibilty and price $900, unfortunately they've been discontinued. Any suggestions? Any other multi channel bridgeable amps under $1000 that anyone would recommend or should I just go with the Outlaw 7075?

Bridgeable multichannel amps are getting pretty scarce these days. A 7075 certainly sounds like a promising choice. When paired with the Adcom it would give you power for the two surrounds, allow you the option of adding rear surrounds later (for 7.1 instead of 5.1), and let you add a second zone at some point.

Looks like that is probably my best option Gonk.
I do have one other question. My buddy who is in a band says to just get a Crown, Nady or some other 2 channel musicians amp. What exactly is the performance difference between those amps and the home audio amps. The price is pretty substantial and I have seen where some guys have 5 six or 7 amps bridged for each channel and do have them set up for their home theatre.
Is there that much of a sound difference because I can't say I've ever heard one in a Home Theatre setup.

The musician's amps (also sometimes called pro amps) are most often used to drive passive subwoofers, which is the role in which I first saw them appear in home theater setups. You can get a good bit of power for not much money, but they often save money by using fans for cooling instead of passive cooling with large machined aluminum heatsinks. There are some folks around here who have used them and can comment - nfaguys comes to mind, as I think he was using Crown amps along with the Crown pre-amps and speakers in his four-channel setup (since upgraded to use a 990 and 755, based on his experience with a 990 and the 755 in a home theater setup that presently uses a 990 and 7700 to drive six KEF speakers and an LFM-1 Plus).

To Gonk's point, Behringer (a big pro audio manufacturer) makes a 2-channel amp that's actually supposed to be pretty decent sounding. It's the A500 and is 230 watts into 4ohms and can be bridged, uping the power potential to 500WPC mono / 4ohms. They can be had online for about $160 if you look around.

This amp is supposed to be something of a bridge between a pro audio amp and an audiophile amp. For surround sound applications, I think it offers a pretty good solution. But if it were an amp for my mains, I'm not sure it would be on the top of my list.

In many cases bridging two channels of an amp requires nothing more than inverting the signal and applying at equal amplitude to the second channel, then taking the output between the two hot leads. There are limits, usually when bridging two amps rated at 4 ohms minimum you can't connect speakers lower than 8 ohms in bridged mode. Building a unity gain inverting preamp to connect between the inputs of the two channels would be the only problem. Maybe something for Outlaw to consider......

Well after looking over some different amps including Parasound and Emotiva (both of which are too deep dimensionally to fit in my cabinet) I think the wisest choice wil be the 7125. I'm weary about the Adcom amps now that 2 have been fried in storms, not that the 6 channel one will go anytime soon but if however it does, the 7125 will power my entire system. The 7125 seems to be worth the $300 difference over the 7075 and since I'm having a problem finding a 2 channel amp for less than $600 I might as well go for the 7 channel. Thanks Guys!

Cool! The 7125 should take care of you very nicely for a long time to come...

One last question Gonk,
Can I run a DC trigger to both the Adcom and 7125 at the same time with some kind of Y adapter or will it potentially do any harm?

You should be able to split the 12V trigger and run to both just fine - unless one of them required a pretty high current to trigger, a simple Y-splitter should leave enough current for each to kick on (and I wouldn't expect either to need that high a current to trigger).

I'm hoping that it will be that simple. Thanks for the reply Gonk

Hi All,

I finally got around to hooking up the new 7125. I am using it to drive the mains and center while I have the Adcom driving my surrounds. Don't ask me why, but I just decided not to use all the channels on the 7125 for now.
One day after I ordered it, I received an email about the combo special with the 970 for $1298.
I already have a 970 but for $298 I decided to get another one. Again, don't ask me why. I suppose maybe for a backup in case I have another lightning storm damage or maybe sell it on ebay, or set it up at the lake house eventually with another system.
In any case, I have found that with BOTH 970's the knob shafts don't line up and both knobs are scraping against the face. I originally sent back my first one because of this. Just wondering if anyone else has had an issue with these knobs. Fortunately I use the remote, but I'm a bit disappointed in the fit quality of the knobs on both the big knob and earphone level knob.
As for the amp........... very nice and I have a y adapter for the DC trigger so both amps do turn on together. Thanks Gonk!