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Spectron amplifier "The Musician"

67.68.182.4
Posted on November 2, 2009 at 06:11:09
Odyno
Audiophile

Posts: 90
Joined: April 28, 2005
 There are a lot of good things written about Spectron amplifiers.
If they are so good, why do they come up on the used market?

Any Spectron or ex-Spectron amplifier willing to explain their audiophile path?
RE: Spectron amplifier "The Musician", posted on November 7, 2009 at 03:00:19
oofer
Audiophile

Posts: 264
Location: Coastal Oregon
Joined: February 6, 2004
 I currently own a Spectron Musician III Mk2 SE. I doubt very much I will buy another amp ever. It performs extremely well in my system, though I do not even scratch the surface of its power most of the time.

The company honored a warrantee issue with deliberate speed and thourough attention to detail. The unit is pretty heavy so shipping it back and forth wasn't cheap.

I have owned lots of amps, both professional and audiophile amps. I have made my own. Used tubes, OTL, class A and clas A/AB.

Love my amp.

I think the reason one sees so many on the market at times is that the company went through a pretty steep and frequent upgrade path on the Musician I, II, III, III mk 2, then IIImk2 SE. It pisses people off to buy a product and then see it upgraded in two months or six.

The reason for this I leave for Simon and John to explain in detail, but I went through the upgrades starting with the III to the MK2 SE, and I noticed significant differences in performance on the way up, but I am done. This amp is just fine and totally does what I expect an amp to do. I do love that it can stay on all the time without spinning my electric meter or over heating my room.

The amp can benefit from HIFi tuning fuses, four internal one external. I don't think that improvement is limited to Spectron. All my equipment now uses them.

AND, finally the amp seems to really take a LONG time to burn in. I noted improvements in detail and depth til I reached about 1000 hours. It was kind of funny how it just got better and better with time. I use a very heavy gauge PCooc power cord, again improvement significant and with in a good cost enefit ratio. Dedicated 10 amp circuit may help to. When it needs power, it needs it right now. There is no reason to run it through a choke.

So a bit tweeky, lots of time playing music, and it opens right up into the very, very good amp it is. It is a handy bit of industrial design if you pop the hood.

My Spectron amplifier story, posted on November 3, 2009 at 15:30:38
David L
Audiophile

Posts: 47
Location: Hampshire, UK
Joined: November 16, 2002
 I first heard a Spectron amp, the Spectron 1KW, in a San Francisco Hi Fi store in the late 1990s. I was looking for a replacement for a Sumo 9+ class A amp which had better defined bass while retaining the same mid-range quality, and what I heard suggested that the Spectron amp might be what I was looking for. So after reading a few reviews I contacted Spectron with a few questions. I ended up talking to John Ulrick the chief designer / CEO. He was just about to launch the Musician amp and I agreed to buy one on a sale or return basis. So I got one of the very early models in May 2000. The amp delivered the sound quality I was looking for, but initially had some hardware teething problems. These were all sorted, with personal attention from John Ulrich. The amp was upgraded (at no cost) to Musician II standard and subsequently performed faultlessly until I sold it in 2006. There were 3 reasons why I sold the amp:
(1) I heard more transparent amps with equally good bass & mid-range.
(2) The next Spectron model, the Musician III, which reviews indicated had better transparency, was beyond my budget.
(3) I found a UK manufacturer (Alner-Hamblin) who made a much more affordable class D amp (the SA400) that could be bridged to give 1.2 kW per channel. I auditioned this and found that the sound quality was superior to that of the Musician II.
In essence Spectron amps are very good but at their current price level they have to compete with a large number of other very good amps.
David

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