Tryant
pfm Member
I would have thought from the description that the problem is the speakers. In the Colloms’ review that Neat have on their website, he has some reservations about the treble. He seemed to cure the problem by tweaking the positioning of the speakers. I’ve never owned Neat speakers, but once upon a time briefly considered older Momentums and found I didn’t like the treble. The lab report also shows how demanding these speakers are on an amplifier (they drop down to 3 ohms). When Stereophile reviewed the Sugden A21ai some year ago, Atkinson found that the amp was very unhappy with impedances below 8 ohms. Hopefully the SE is better in that regard.
I’ve always loved the idea of Sugden. The reality is a little more nuanced. I had an A21a for a time, which had a nice warm sound, but put a slight veil over everything. I was using it with speakers that were easy to drive albeit with low sensitivity (Spendor S3/5R and Harbeth P3ESR). I never tried the amp with difficult speakers like the Neat appear to be judging from Colloms’ measurements. I also still have an A48 that was lovingly restored by Sugden, but that’s a completely different beast. Unfortunately, I never had the chance to try the A21a with the pair of AN-Ks I had for a while.
I would have thought the Naim, Exposure or Rega Aethos, as someone else suggested above, would be a good match if you want to keep the speakers. However, you really need to borrow the amp and use it in your system at home to see if it will do what you want it to do. It’s nigh on impossible to come to any meaningful conclusions about the “sound” of amps like these in a demo at a dealers, even with your own speakers.
I’ve always loved the idea of Sugden. The reality is a little more nuanced. I had an A21a for a time, which had a nice warm sound, but put a slight veil over everything. I was using it with speakers that were easy to drive albeit with low sensitivity (Spendor S3/5R and Harbeth P3ESR). I never tried the amp with difficult speakers like the Neat appear to be judging from Colloms’ measurements. I also still have an A48 that was lovingly restored by Sugden, but that’s a completely different beast. Unfortunately, I never had the chance to try the A21a with the pair of AN-Ks I had for a while.
I would have thought the Naim, Exposure or Rega Aethos, as someone else suggested above, would be a good match if you want to keep the speakers. However, you really need to borrow the amp and use it in your system at home to see if it will do what you want it to do. It’s nigh on impossible to come to any meaningful conclusions about the “sound” of amps like these in a demo at a dealers, even with your own speakers.
