I feel rather ashamed when I look at the 'tractor built' 24/7 running and cap-eating products we were raving about back then in the UK audio dark ages of the 80s - and which had absolutely nowhere near this level of performance despite rapidly increasing prices, especially in the mid to late 80s.
A long standing dealer pal once moaned about Accuphase in the UK as being 'one man with cheque-book,' travelling periodically to Germany to pick a few boxes up to bring back to sell. I think distribution is a bit better than this today and my local audio salon adores the brand as well it should.
Back then, our high end market (over Linn and Naim) was primarily ARC and Krell, neither brand being remotely as good as this, despite the ravings of reviewer-guru Martin Colloms at the time (and even now maybe).
I do appreciate that the line performance can arguably be equalled or bettered by a chip or two plus a handful of passives around them and a clean simple power supply, but that's not the point here now, is it
What a gorgeous unit and shame on me for not looking their way when I could 'almost afford to' at trade prices and a bank loan may have done it. Thing is (and it certainly applies to high end cars as well), in my younger days, I'd not have fully appreciated how good and carefully crafted units like this really are, to be treasured almost as audio heirlooms really.
Thanks so much for the review
P.S. I don't have a picture (my photography using a known good-for-snapshots phone is awful anyway), but you CAN have too much of this visual luxury. At a fairly recent Audio East small-HiFi show, the Accuphase rep had a quantity of units displayed on a white cloth covered trestle table and it looked absolutely classless and common, to have all these gold and rosewood coloured boxes piled two-high in a row and wouldn't play music as it was in-between dems - I didn't re-introduce myself as he didn't recognise me from olden times when he used to call on us (KEF I think). Another exhibitor was showing off some new speaker confections powered by a modern Accuphase pre and power amp, all gently lit and the visual aspect was totally different, classy, elegant and the 'sound,' although being a bit 'HiFi' as expensive ssspeakersss seem to be these days, was totally clean and 'grain-free.'
Happy daze...
