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£130 Amp with MM stage

Elephantears said:
Which Rega were you thinking Howdy?
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Back in the days I had a Brio on a home demo for a week and it was incredibly great with my cheap deck of the day. It was incredibly awful with my then just new Arcam CD player though, I think it must have been some sort of impendance mismatch or something.

I believe it was Brio 2, still clamshell, but not the one that was only 20cm or so deep.

PS. Should Paul Darwin be reading this: please make the timeline on Rega site more interactive and useful - adding links to pics and such.
 
If you are prepared to go SH the choices are vast, and for much less than £100. The decent brands are all pretty good, I don't think any of them turned out a dud within the scope of the price bracket. Go shopping with Fleabay within striking distance of the house and £50, you'll get some great choices. Maybe not the current darlings (NAD, Cyrus, Creek, whoever else it is just now) but some equally competent offerings.
 
banjoman said:
+1

The Sonys would be the best all-rounders if you can get them in budget
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Yes I suspect they will be more expensive. Are those two ES amps mentioned by Hoops the ones to look for, or are there others? I remember your enthusiasm for the ES you had.
 
Hoopsontoast said:
Sony TA-F670ES or TA-F3000ES would do the trick
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Seconded on the 670ES as that's what I currently use, suggested the 940 as thinking you'd get a better example for the budget.

Side by side listening for me found me thinking the 940 sounded immediately impressive but the 670Es was the better balanced overall. I felt in a 20min shop shoot out I would have walked out with the 940 though which would be a mistake as the 670 is the classier amp.
 
The Creek is a strong contender but I only paid £35 for mine and it seems to be in full working order. The prices seem to be going up and you dont know what working condition they are really in. The phono stage isnt shielded from dect phones :)

Denon.... Marantz take your pick. You will get more than a few suggestions.

I dont know if you want to see whats on the second hand market. A voice in the back of my head is saying check out what brand new stuff Richer sounds have got on offer at that price :)
 
I have a Cambridge Audio A1 sitting here doing nothing if you want to come and get it (for a small donation to PFM). In good cosmetic nick and sounds rather tidy.
 
The Nytech CA252 has a pair of flying RCA sockets on its phono input so that wouldn't present a problem. For line inputs then an adapter would be fine.

For £130 I'd also track down a Sony 670ES as recommended above - I had one after owning a Claymore, bought it on a whim. 48 hours later the Claymore was sold. The Sonys are superb, no question.
 
Minstrel SE said:
I dont know if you want to see whats on the second hand market. A voice in the back of my head is saying check out what brand new stuff Richer sounds have got on offer at that price :)
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I should have specified that I was only really interested in second hand. I thought the Creek and Onix references made that clear but sorry for not specifying.
 
JustJohn said:
I have a Cambridge Audio A1 sitting here doing nothing if you want to come and get it (for a small donation to PFM). In good cosmetic nick and sounds rather tidy.
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That's very kind; thanks for the offer. My feeling, however, is that a 20W amp might not be ideal. The majority of their listening is dance music, and they are trying to get enough bass out of small speakers, which will tend to be inefficient, so some guts are needed.

I think the Sony ES would be ideal, but they are thin on the ground. I'll keep looking for a week or so, but not optimistic, especially at this price point.

I have spied an Arcam A75, which looks like it would be good enough.

Creek 4140s2 are surprisingly harder to find than they used to be. There are lots of 4040s, but later models are scarce.
 
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