US $3000

Genuingly innovtive products come along only rarely- most push pull tube power amps are based on very conventional 1950's designs and have severe limitations when used with todays loudspeakers.

The SUPRATEK MALBEC uses start of the art design to overcome these limitations and provide an up to date design with the power and control of solid state amps and the sweetness and emotion of tube design.

Typical solid state amps have damping factors between 200 and 1000. A typical push pull tube amp will have a damping factor of approx 10. And this is achieved only with significant amounts of negative feedback. Small amounts of negative feedback do no harm, but the amounts needed to lower tube amps output impedance result in a constricted and veiled sound. (Damping factor is the speaker load divided by the amplifiers output impedance - an amplifier output impedance of 1 ohm into an 8 ohm speaker gives a damping factor of 8)

These low damping factors from typical tube push pull amps results in vague and indistinct bass, and depending on the speaker, often a rolled off upper treble response.

The Supratek MALBEC uses a unique circuit design to significantly reduce output impedance without high levels of negative feedback. Output impedance can be adjusted to 0.0 ohms which is theoritical infinite damping factor. It can also be adjusted to negative values, allowing for the source resistance of speaker cables and speaker wiring. A small amount of negative feedback is used, which can be switched out if not required.

There have been other tube amps with very high damping factors, but the MALBEC is the first to be built with a relatively uncomplicated circuit incorporating aspects of our world famous preamplifier designs, reknowned for their transperancy and musical sonics.

All very well and good,
but how does it work in the real world?

We were quite excited when we saw the potentional on test instruments, but absolutely amazed when we heard them playing music.

Another difficult speaker is the Spendor BC-3 - this legendary speaker is capable of truly excellent sound but devours power - we normally drive it with a 350 watt solid state amp on the bass and 150 watt solid state amp on mid/treble. Anything less and it suffers from poor dynamics and slow transient speeed.  We were astounded  when  an early prototype of the Malbec using EL34 tubes and producing 50 watts drove it with ease and actually sounded more natural and musical than the solid state amps. They had a real sense of ease and to our amazement the bass sounded tighter and more articulate with 20 watts than it did with 350 watts of solid state power. The Malbecs have the control and grip of solid state amps, but also the beautiful sonics of low feedback tube amps - they really are the ideal amp for most speakers available today- they dont have enough power for really dificult speakers like electrostatics, ribbons etc, but will drive nearly all moving coil speakers.

The Malbecs also have a unique biasing system that enables the use of different output tubes without the need for any bias adjustment. Standard tube is the KT88 which provides the most power, but the sweeter sounding EL34 can also be directly substituted with no adjustment or modification. Similiarly the 6L6GC, 5881, KT66, 6550 can also be used. Volume level, and damping factor is controllable from front panel mounted knobs. Negative feedback is adjustable on back panel.

The Malbec produces 40 watt before the onset of clipping with KT88, KT66 or EL34 tubes.No rebiasing is needed with different tubes- just plug and play for diferent sonics.