![]() ![]() Made for us, or by us, was a common theme in my conversations with Audio Note folks. The amp's snazzy gold knobs are "made for us in Taiwan to our design, as are the RCA jacks, which are plated with 50 microns of silver. The Meishu Tonmeister's volume controlno remote control hereis designed in-house at Audio Note and manufactured by an outside contractor based in the UK. The Meishu's back panel is made of 3mm acrylic its fascia, 10mm acrylic. Its weight is mostly in its transformer-bearing rear, which makes hauling it up stairs and moving it on and off my equipment rack a challenging and noisy exercise (grunts, groans, and other emanations). Generating just 8Wpc into 4 or 8 ohms, the aluminum-encased Meishu Phono 300B stands a stout 18.1" wide × 20.9" deep, and 8.7" tall. Lighton also brought along an Audio Note S4 SUT so that I could use the Tonmeister, which has a phono stage that's MM-only, with my MC cartridges. The Meishu Phono's new pair of Psvane Standard Hifi Series 300B tubes required 1≢00 hours to hit their stride, advised NYC Audio Note tech Ben Jacoby. I brought it up the stairs to my sixth-floor walkup listening warren with help from Audio Note confrere Robert Lighton. It weighs about 65lb and started shipping in late 2019. The Meishu Phono 300B Tonmeister ($19,300) is a class-A, zero negative feedback, single-ended-triode (SET) integrated amplifier. After a quick consultation with Editor Jim Austin, I said yes. After one recent show, Audio Note owner/CEO Peter Qvortrup asked me if I'd like to review one of their most recently introduced products, the Audio Note Meishu Phono 300B Tonmeister. I've covered Audio Note rooms at several recent hi-fi shows. How times and real estate values have changed. One frigid night, I rescued boxes of ancient radio tubes from an abandoned building on the corner of Mott and Houston in Soho, now a fashionable district with exorbitant rents, barely a 10-minute walk from Fi, Don Garber's fabled shop at 30 Watts Street. I had boxes of them, especially of versions of the 6SN7 triode used in the M2. ![]() I spent countless hours researching RCA 5692s, Mullard ECC32s, RCA VT231s, and Sylvania 6SN7s and trying them out in the M2, each new, used, or new-old-stock tube producing stark differences in resolution, tone, soundstage, bass extension, and immediacy. The Audio Note M2 preamplifier was one of the most transparent audio products I'd ever heard, its single 6SN7 tube extremely sensitive to tube rolling. (Senior Contributing Editor Herb Reichert was Michael's partner in that 1990s-era Audio Note venture.) Herb can regale you with tales of motoring across the Soviet Union in an unheated Mercedes, trunk full of Audio Note components and American dollars, but that's a story for another review (most likely to be written by Herb). Whilst working on our top of the line Black Gate replacements (which should be released in the second half of 2015) we realised that it would be possible to put together a range of more affordable capacitors that use all of the same materials as these supreme components (the same special electrolyte, foil and construction quality) apart from the hyper expensive and extremely difficult to produce Graphite impregnated paper, so the only difference between the KAISEI capacitors and the forthcoming Black Gate replacements is that the paper is not graphite impregnated in the KAISEI, otherwise they are the same.My first high-end component was an Audio Note M2 preamplifier, which I bought from former Audio Note distributor/current Stereophile contributor Michael Trei. The Audio Note (UK)™ KAISEI range has been developed over the past 4 years in collaboration with the engineering team at Rubycon (of Black Gate fame). The first models available will be the Audio Note (UK)™ Standard Electrolytic Audio Capacitor’ and the Audio Note(UK)™ KAISEI Audio Capacitor.įor the past 4 years Audio Note™ has been working with Rubycon to design and make Audio Note™ branded replacements, these will not be exact copies of Black Gates as such, but they will represent what we consider to be a further development of the Black Gate technology, materials mainly and therefore sound quality, I think it is important to stress the fact that we at Audio Note™ still consider the Black Gate the finest sounding electrolytic capacitor ever made and we are therefore keen to reinstate and hopefully improve upon this level of quality before our internal stock of original Black Gates runs out. In September 2014 Audio Note started releasing their new range of exclusively designed and manufactured electrolytic capacitors. Line Output Transformer (Single / Push Pull).Interstage Driver Transformer (Single / Pull).Output Transformer - Single (With SG TAP).Output Transformer - Push Pull (With SG TAP).
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |