Specialist amp manufacturer Musical Fidelity is cocking a snook at talk of recession with the AMS50, a pure Class A beast of a stereo power amplifier, offering a devastating 50 watts per channel of Pure Class A power for a shade under £10K. The Antony Michaelson Signature model, to give it its full name (taken from the company’s founder/owner) and claims a vanishingly small 0.01 per cent distortion from 10Hz to 50kHz and only 0.1 per cent at 100kHz, which is well above the range of human hearing in any case.
Musical Fidelity AMS50
It’s no wallflower either, taking up 32×48×45cm, mainly due to the amount of heat it produces, requiring massive heatsinks to dissipate.
It’s a true dual mono design, with the two channels kept entirely separate and Musical Fidelity claims a first with its low-feedback fully balanced bridged circuit design, which the company claims has never been executed before in a Class A amp. The idea is that each ‘half’ of the amplifier is in opposite phase to the other, resulting in power supply noise (which can be considerable in Class A designs) being effectively cancelled.
There are two sets of speaker outputs, plus RCA phono inputs and XLR connections for use with balanced preamps and a 12V trigger socket for remote switching.
It’s available in either black or silver with a three-piece front panel tooled from solid blocks of military-spec billet aluminium as are the panels on the top and back. The cost, a mere snip at £9,900.