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That's a Roy Grant design formerly of “Grant-Lumley” made in the 1980s to 1990s. I remember several

Posted by cfb (A) on June 17, 2010 at 06:12:30

In Reply to: Information Sought on: Grant 60GS tube integrated amplifier posted by JamesR on June 16, 2010 at 22:21:02:

conversations with Roy a long time back, he was quite outspoken on equipment design. Unfortunately, I heard he passed away, and the company “Grant” is no more. There was a rather bitter business breakup between Roy Grant and Ray Lumley back in the early 1980s when they had a bit of buzz in the industry with their GL-100 mono amp, when it was still “Grant-Lumley” days. Separately, both went on to design and market their respective audio lines in the UK throughout the 1980s and 90s. In addition to your 60 watt integrated Roy made 100 watt and 200 watt monoblock amps (I still have a pair) and a stand alone preamp and briefly a moving coil head amp which I have never seen on the market, maybe over in England they might turn up? All of the Grant line went through several series of redesigns, hard to tell if you have a series I or II or III as the faceplates did not change much or if the update was done without altering the chassis, Roy preferred to put money into the parts and transformers and not the casework. To hear him tell it that was one of the reasons he and Ray had their falling out. As you would expect Roy always felt his products were superior to the Lumleys in performance as he thought Ray's products were more for looks than circuit as it were. I am certain that Ray Lumley would have vehemently disagreed with Roy on that point. I will say that the Lumley line did escalate higher in price than the Grant products did so they were aimed at slightly different strata of the audiophile market. The Grant 200 watt monos in their last series went for around 8,000 a pair, a lot of that was do to import into the US, whereas the Lumley line had a reference amp that was 18,000 a pair. Grant never received the industry buzz his products deserved, To use as an example, Croft products had more press than Grant did and Croft isn't all that well known in the US. So, Grant products are to most a mystery over here, maybe better well-known in the UK. The Grant line was more expensive than Croft so it had a smaller market even in the UK, but the Lumley line received much more press than Grant did and the Lumleys were even more costly than the Grants. The early amps from both Grant and Lumley were known to be stellar performers in their day, slightly darker sound than some but the amps could throw a 3D-like soundstage with impressive midrange transparency. Sometimes compared favorably with the Jadis amps back in the 1980s. All of Grant's amps were tube push-pull class AB and used the KT88 and 6550 and briefly an EL34 model. Grant's early products even came supplied with high grade Telefunken 12AX7s and 12AU7s for the input and phase splitter stages, just try finding those quality tubes today. ;-) Probably more than you wanted to hear, but I hope this helps to provide some background history of the Grant line.

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