high-end gear

[jammy395]

You pays yer money and makes yer choice.....And the wealthier you are, the bigger yer choice.
One is free to spend ones dosh as one sees fit.

And I guess its human nature for us poor folk to envy the minted wankers......

But take heart peasents, fine sounding kit can be had that can indeed piss on the rip off tat..

[Classicrock]

Yes hi-end is overpriced and often sounds no better but I bet a lot of people hate it because they can't afford it. Let's face it most on forums wouldn't stretch to NVA prices and limit themselves to used gear or Tisbury and the like.

[paskinner]

Nothing wrong with Tisbury, cheap and cheerful but sounds fine to my ears. In the right (well-matched) system, a decent little passive can outperform a quite expensive active preamp, sometimes. I'm not sure that hi fi can be arranged by price these days, not above quite a low figure.
So there's fun to be had at all price ranges; and fun is what it is about. Mind you, I can hear the London Philharmonic for £25 (we buy a season ticket) and that's real value...two hours of glorious music from a fine orchestra for the cost of a curry and beer.

[_D_S_J_R_]

The Tisbury attenuators do offer great channel matching on the first couple of notches from 'zero.'. I don't know if it's auto-suggestion though, but I do think the film pots NVA use allow a little 'more' through. Anyway, you can judge for yourselves when the £100 P20 comes along

[Classicrock]

Wasn't having a go at Tisbury but used it as an example of cheap and cheerful quality product most people want. Hi-end is bought as much for looks and cache as sound. P20 sounds interesting. BTW when is Doc launching this and his other 'budget' products on the Ebay store. I take it Dave you are making the P20 at present.

[Dr Bunsen Honeydew]

Cases being made at the moment.

[applemarc]

Nva is high-gear but most of it does not have a high-end price

[jammy395]

Nva is high-gear but most of it does not have a high-end price

Spot on Mark...

"High end Hifi - At real world prices".

[jammy395]

Wow thats a "Hell of a Krell" you have there Dave........

DSCF0054_zpsjy7i6ak9.jpg (103.01 KiB) Viewed 5991 times

I think you trump MartinT's Belles.....

Is it Heavy....
Is it loud....
Is it good....

etc.

[_D_S_J_R_]

Bloody thing has bass-n-balls to die for, the NVA's seem to trip very lightly in comparison - and I'm NOT being critical as it's all in the power supplies - I've not yet heard A80's as they befit from much larger double? supplies too than my NVA amps!

I was given the Krell by a dear friend of forty years standing. I didn't ask for it and initially didn't really want it either. It's low sensitivity so really ought to have a reasonable-gain active line buffer preamp to drive it, although my P50 is fine with a CD or NVA Phono 2 as source. When first received, it sounded grainy and too 'dry' but with the killer bass - it hadn't been used for eighteen months or more apparently. This is now slightly better on switch-on and after an hour or so (ok to idle on this and subsequent series models as the bias has different levels to keep temperature down), the amp is very sonically transparent and can disappear well into typical UK-style speakers. If driven quite well, the bias lights start to operate and the case gets rather hot rather quickly from then on - around five minutes tops - and this is where VINTAGE TOP END AUDIO can start to cost way more than the basic used price.

Apologies if I've mentioned it before, but the whole top end on the used market 'thing' reminds me of old used Jaguar cars (as they're not always as reliable as Mercs or Beemers). Very cheap to buy used, they cost an absolute fortune to maintain - body and mechanics - unless you have a friend who's an expert in sorting them. Old Krells pre mine, or thrashed versions of sliding-bias and FPB models onwards run almost at cooker temperatures and the capacitors thirty years or so ago don't like this very much at all and leak or blow very easily. A £1,100 bargain KSA 80 from the late 80's may potentially be a very good amp, but may cost nearly as much to re-cap once labour is taken into account. I cite Simon SQ's rebuilds of humungous KSA 250's as proof - and that's a NASTY sounding very hot running thing unless very carefully refurbished.


You know jammy, if I lost all my shedload of old tat and other audio gear, the amp I'd cry over would be the Quad 33/303. It's very dated inside and out and easily bettered when driving modern speaker loads with 4 to 6 ohm impedances and the bass is splodgy when pushed, but there's a 'humanity' in its music making that the NVA's also have in spades and a good set has a midrange to die for. The Krell once well warmed through (why this circuit with 'banks' of transistors for each driver stage?) is very good, but then I look at an NVA amp board with its very simple signal path (unless I'm mistaken, half the transistors around the input don't carry the signal, but work as current mirrors for those that do!) and it sort of brings me back down to earth.