Yesterday, I took the Seventh Veil roadshow up to Northampton, to Carl Pihl's house, the UK distributor of Steinhart amps. To get straight to the bottom line, the Steinhart's are the bargain of the decade at £2,300 for the preamp and £3,400 for the power amp. This is for 100W/channel valves. Yes, the sound was warm with the speakers but I prefer that to cold. Certainly there wasn't a hint of harshness, even with the wick turned up. The highs and lows were both very extended compared to most valve amps and the overall balance seemed quite neutral. We measured the in-room frequency response of the system with the speakers and subs using third octave tones and a good SPL meter. It was respectably flat from 20Hz to 20kHz. There was considerable output at both extremes and significant output at 16Hz. However, the amp controlled the bass very well and it was pretty tight. Imaging and soundstage was excellent, indicating that the phase response of the pre/power amp combo was good - the Steinhart has no coupling capacitors in the circuit so this wasn't totally surprising. 'Slam' and attack were better than I'm used to with valve amps. I look forward to getting the W-M response on this amp and the 'Soul' amp in this regard. Valve amps can rock. It bounced along very nicely too - would give the flat-earth boys something to think about. In short, I expected to like this amp and I did. The Steinhart amplifiers are fabulous. I would recommend that anyone in the market for an amp in this sort of price range (or considerably more) gives it a listen. I haven't heard anything better at the price or anywhere near it.
