Musical Fidelity A1000 Integrated

Anyone know what they're like? There's precious little info on them on the net but what there is looks good.

It's a 50W pure Class A amp and apparently has a sound that's a long way from the typical MF sound of today. I've seen people say that it blows the doors off a NuVista M3

Cornflake in London are selling one for £795 and I've just stuck a deposit on it so keep your grubby hands off

It's not for me though. A mate here in Portugal wants to sell his NuVista M3 and replace it with the A1000. I'm doing the deal (and going to look at it etc because I'm going to be in London next week) and then he's paying me back.

Just wondered if anyone had any experience with the amp though...

Michael.

 

Mike, Is it the Borg Qube? if so GTM has one Wm

 

:boughtMF: :NADowner: :duck: .

Only kidding !

I can only find some Jap based stuff (no pics or nowt ) so it may not be a standard UK/US model .

 

This page http://amp55.com/tr-amp/foreign/musical/mu-a1000.htm (it's in Japanese) has loads of pics of it (which take ages to load). It's basically a guy documenting how he "upgraded" it after one of the resistors went phut! (nice picture of the blast radius of the resistor in there ).

It's Black with 3 knobs on the front and has a separate PSU.

Best image (from that site) is:



Michael.

 

Micheal,

Are you sure thats the right link? Just seems to be the tag maclaren website

 

Interesting that, all those amazing new improved products and fantastic reviews, and yet the old model allegedly sounds better Thats progress for you!

 

Crap - I had the wrong link in my copy/past buffer. Here's the right one:

http://amp55.com/tr-amp/foreign/musical/mu-a1000.htm

I'll edit the original post aswell.

Michael.

 

404 error page not found

 

Bollox - it definitely worked earlier (that's where the pic is from). Looks like the owner of the site may have exceeded their bandwidth allowance because it comes up with something like "suspended page".

Try Google's cached version of the page:

http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cach...000.htm+Musical+Fidelity+A1000&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

Michael.

 

The pics may of course not come up any longer (I have them in cache) if the guy really has blown his bandwidth allowance.

Michael.

 

from what I hear of them via the stingy amount of info. mf divulges, they are the basically the same as the a1, but with a bigger output stage..can't be worse than that dreary a1001 I had...shades of penances...I thought I was getting a big a1000..totally different item altogether...should've checked things out more thoroughly...even so, good reports, shows not to listen to reviews too much...

 

Hi Mike

that price sounds a bit steep? I seem to remember that when I had my MF E100 integrated (RRP £600 ish) the A1001 was about £1200ish (I think)

Some MF class A stuff has reliability problems, dont know if this is one of those models.

Cheers
Chris

NB Tone - from memory it looks more the size and shape of a nuvista, but piano black and with heat sinks on the left/right sides - I think GTMs cube is a lot more powerful... I could have my wires crossed?

Chris

 

It's an A1000 not A1001 allthough I don't know what the difference is. Cornflake say it cost £1600 new.

Reliability issues are the only concern really for the guy who's buying it. Shouldn't be to hard to fix though.

Michael.

 

I think they may be wrong about the price. I remember them being just in the £1100-1200 mark when they came out.

 

Yes, I definitely remember this being the case too. The A1 I certainly remember being one of the models in question, caused by the vast amount of heat being generated inside the case which in the long term caused components to fail. The failed components could be replaced of course, but I think it was down to the case design which meant that failure would happen again a year or two down the line after repair IIRC.

Not sure about the A1000, the case is different in design and better ventilated than the A1 IIRC, so therefore less prone to the long term effects of overheating of internal components, so maybe someone else who knows can confirm this.

 

Yep, the A1000 has a MUCH bigger case than the A1, and the A1 is the one that has the main reliability probs, not least due to the age of the earlier models - and the heat - anyone want fried eggs on that griddle pan lid??

I had the misfortune to touch an A1 once (I think that was in the Cornflake Shop funnily enough) - I learnt my lesson PDQ - it was boiling hot!

Nothing a pair of computer fans and a Tarnpoint wallwart won't solve though

 

Went to listen to the A1000 today at Cornflake....WOW! is it one amazing amp

50W of pure Class A sounds absolutely sublime. I already mentioned it in the "Old vs. New" thread but this amp has a sound so fluid, so open so just involving it's incredible. I listened to most of Nitin's "Beyond Skin" and it's a cliché to say it but I heard it in a completely different light. Layers were there I'd never heard before.

I was using it with a pair of Dynaudio Audience 52s (the friend I'm buying it for has Dynaudio's, like I do) and an AVI Lab Series CD player - neither of which would trouble my Contour 1.3MkIIs or DAC64 so it must have been the amp.

The manual (which btw looks like it's been typed by hand!) advises that the best dynamic and musical potential won't be realised if used with low impedance or inefficient speakers (the Dynaudios are both) but I found it to be extremely dynamic and musical.

Others have said the A1000 is easily the best amp that MF have ever made and allthough I haven't heard many I wouldn't be surprised if it was true - it easily trounces the NuVista M3. For the prices they go for now (on the rare occasions they come up for sale) they're an absolute bargain.

It does get bloody hot though!

Michael.

 

Humm I wonder if it has a choke regulated power suppy
So in essence your saying it's as good as a Graham's LC audio job Then Mike? Wm

 

Mike, interesting report. People have always said that Tim de Paravicinis designs were good. Why the hell didnt MF stick with this type of design

I reckon you need to hear what a good valve amp can do

WM, IIRC, the A1000 didnt have a CRPS.

Robbo

 

I can't really make that comparison. I heard Graham's LC Audio Patriot a while ago in a completely different system listening to completely different music.

I have the feeling that Graham would be impressed by it though I reckon you'd be impressed by it to Perhaps isn't quite as dynamic as you'd like though. Bass control was hard to judge accurately because the Cornflake listening room had an outrageous level of bass boom it wasn't even funny. I got them to bung up the ports on the Dynaudios and that controlled it somewhat but we lost a bit of bass as a result.

I can't wait to hear it in a better setup

Michael.