Amplifiers

The NAD 3020 was undoubtedly the finest hi-fi success story ever reported at the start of the 1980s. This small integrated amplifier had a tremendous impact on the cheap hi-fi market, and for good reason. The infant New Acoustic Dimension, introduced in 1979 and priced – for a brief, fleeting moment – £59, sounded significantly […]

A passive preamplifier is simple to construct; I’ve built several. Purchase a 50k ohm potentiometer from RS Components or a similar company, connect it to four phono connectors, and, if you’re feeling brave, mount it in a box with a knob! You can get great results for cheap, which makes you question why some people

Sugden has no introduction; everyone with even a passing interest in audiophilia is familiar with the A21 series of English amplifiers, which began with an 11 watt solid-state bipolar integrated amplifier in the mid-1960s. The A21a became a nineties benchmark; a specialist product that promised clarity at the expense of all else… It was produced

Nytech’s iconic ‘Calculator Tuner Amplifier’ is virtually forgotten these days, although it made a big impact on the British hi-fi market when it was hot in the late 1970s. When it was first released in 1972, calculators were practically the width and depth of an LP record, and they, like the Nytech, were connected into

Philips, don’t you simply adore them? Whenever this inventive Dutch consumer electronics behemoth ventured near serious hi-fi, everything went horribly wrong. The company’s portfolio of avowedly high-end late-1970s esoterica, the ‘Black Tulip’ collection, was designed to take on both the Brits and the Japanese in one fell stroke. Unfortunately, it had about as big of

It all began in a Cambridge bedroom – Audiolab’s bedroom, to be precise. Philip Swift, along with Derek Scotland, left his “day job” as a director of Lentek Audio to found a company that would have a big impact on the hi-fi sector for the next fifteen years. In the autumn of 1982, while Duran

Let’s be honest: Bang & Olufsen’s philosophy isn’t ‘sound first, everything else second.’ However, if we’re being honest, it’s difficult to say the same about the majority of so-called “true hi-fi” makers, to whom we serious audiophiles happily grant house room. Can you honestly state that the ordinary Arcam is solely concerned with sound, ignoring

Do you recall the decade of the 1980s? The only substantial amplification at the start of the decade came in two boxes. You’d have to buy two, one marked ‘pre’ and the other marked ‘power’, whether it was Naim, Meridian, Exposure, or Quad. Then, in 1984, Naim Audio shocked the hi-fi world with the introduction

One of the most iconic names in British hi-fi, Harold Joseph Leak founded this now-defunct company in London in 1934, later selling it to the Rank Organisation in January 1969, when its fortunes began to falter. Between these times, and particularly in the 1950s and 1960s, the brand was known for high-quality amplifiers, radio tuners,

It’s not just about listening to music when it comes to hi-fi. Of course, its primary role is to sound good, but it also serves an aesthetic purpose. There’s no shortage of gear that excels at one of these functions, but it’s unusual to find something that excels at both, such as Lecson’s famed AC1/AP3