Not much going on here so I thought I'd spice things up with pictures of two NP220 Platinum Plus amps with every option possible and then some. These custom hybrid amps are beautiful sounding and take on the character of whatever tubes are in the front end voltage gain stage. In this case both use Mullard ECC35 CV569s. From rough count on the Aria website I think only about 60 of these NP series were ever made in any configuration ranging from Basic to Platinum and a lot ended up in Asia.
The first, black panel one (bottom pic), was originally an SA20 upgraded to Basic back in 1999 and successively upgraded over the years to Platinum by Counterpoint. It turned out to have a bad circuit board which was replaced along with more modifications and was one of the last jobs Dai Phan did for Mike in early 2012. It was the most extensively custom amp Aria ever produced. I never cared much for the Dynamicaps so I substituted CuTF coupling V-Caps instead and the PS has 16 10K uF Black Gates 'lytics - $4K worth.
Since I bi-amp Magnepan 3.6s, I bought a second amp (top pic) in late 2012 after Aria closed and had it upgraded by Music Technology as closely as possible to the other except I changed the pre-driver voicing resistors for just a bit warmer sound. The PS caps here are the legendary Siemens Sikorels.
One of the big surprises and improvements in the sound as you "scaled up" from the Basic model was a result of the increasing use of Texas Component TX 2575 resistors starting from 16 to over 60. These dramatically increase the transparency and let the true glory of the tube front end shine through.
I can't describe how wonderful these amps sound but they are truly special! The sound's the best of both worlds. They have all the best immediacy, spacial, tonal color, solidity, and textural characteristics of tube amps with good leading edge definition, tremendous bass impact, and huge power output of solid state.
The first, black panel one (bottom pic), was originally an SA20 upgraded to Basic back in 1999 and successively upgraded over the years to Platinum by Counterpoint. It turned out to have a bad circuit board which was replaced along with more modifications and was one of the last jobs Dai Phan did for Mike in early 2012. It was the most extensively custom amp Aria ever produced. I never cared much for the Dynamicaps so I substituted CuTF coupling V-Caps instead and the PS has 16 10K uF Black Gates 'lytics - $4K worth.
Since I bi-amp Magnepan 3.6s, I bought a second amp (top pic) in late 2012 after Aria closed and had it upgraded by Music Technology as closely as possible to the other except I changed the pre-driver voicing resistors for just a bit warmer sound. The PS caps here are the legendary Siemens Sikorels.
One of the big surprises and improvements in the sound as you "scaled up" from the Basic model was a result of the increasing use of Texas Component TX 2575 resistors starting from 16 to over 60. These dramatically increase the transparency and let the true glory of the tube front end shine through.
I can't describe how wonderful these amps sound but they are truly special! The sound's the best of both worlds. They have all the best immediacy, spacial, tonal color, solidity, and textural characteristics of tube amps with good leading edge definition, tremendous bass impact, and huge power output of solid state.