Puffin
06-10-2016, 12:22
I bought this from matt2007 after it was advertised in Private Exhibitions. I collected it on Tuesday and have put a few hours on it since then.
I found a very interesting article about this amp and the company company behind it on 6 Moons. These amps were marketed under the name of MiniWatt, but it seems that MiniWatt really only distributed and rebadged these amps from APPJ. The circuit of the amp is single-ended and produces 3.5 watts output with an SMPS. The amp uses one 12AX7 and two EL84s. Inside shot below.
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i239/saxonsex/miniwatt_zpsagapepgc.jpg
It is very nicely finished and obviously weighty due to the transformers. 3.5W is not going to enable you to bring the house down.......or is it?
I have two sets of open baffle speakers which are both roughly 92 - 93dB sensitive. I thought that this little amp was going to struggle to give me any real sense of performance and I might be disappointed. If this had turned out to be the case I was going to use it simply to power the mid-range or HF. The PA0901A has a passive pot to control volume. I use an Icon Audio Pre based on an early Ming Da design. You can get details online of a review of this by HiFi World. This has quite a lot of gain and may be why I got such good results.
So....what does it sound like? Some years ago I had a Kel 84, a push-pull amp that was sold through Hifi World in kit form. I bought mine ready made. It was said to be 30W per channel which I always thought was an exaggerated figure. I felt it was ok, but didn't really float my boat. So what does 3.5W of single endedness do.....well it does most things really well. When the first few bars of music came through I actually said to myself "wow" this is good. With what I have used with it, it gives plenty enough power to fill the room.....nd then some. Having now had the opportunity to play lots of different styles of music through it I can say that this sounds better than it has any right to. HF and Mids are sweet and detailed and it gives a very good soundstage and things are in the right place. I am a bass head and am very picky about it. The bass doesn't draw attention to itself and by saying this you may think that it is therefore lacking....not at all. It goes pretty deep, and maybe at it's lowest is just a tad soft, but this is not a criticism. Thoroughly recommended with the caveat that I can only relay what I have heard with the components I have used with it.
I found a very interesting article about this amp and the company company behind it on 6 Moons. These amps were marketed under the name of MiniWatt, but it seems that MiniWatt really only distributed and rebadged these amps from APPJ. The circuit of the amp is single-ended and produces 3.5 watts output with an SMPS. The amp uses one 12AX7 and two EL84s. Inside shot below.
http://i73.photobucket.com/albums/i239/saxonsex/miniwatt_zpsagapepgc.jpg
It is very nicely finished and obviously weighty due to the transformers. 3.5W is not going to enable you to bring the house down.......or is it?
I have two sets of open baffle speakers which are both roughly 92 - 93dB sensitive. I thought that this little amp was going to struggle to give me any real sense of performance and I might be disappointed. If this had turned out to be the case I was going to use it simply to power the mid-range or HF. The PA0901A has a passive pot to control volume. I use an Icon Audio Pre based on an early Ming Da design. You can get details online of a review of this by HiFi World. This has quite a lot of gain and may be why I got such good results.
So....what does it sound like? Some years ago I had a Kel 84, a push-pull amp that was sold through Hifi World in kit form. I bought mine ready made. It was said to be 30W per channel which I always thought was an exaggerated figure. I felt it was ok, but didn't really float my boat. So what does 3.5W of single endedness do.....well it does most things really well. When the first few bars of music came through I actually said to myself "wow" this is good. With what I have used with it, it gives plenty enough power to fill the room.....nd then some. Having now had the opportunity to play lots of different styles of music through it I can say that this sounds better than it has any right to. HF and Mids are sweet and detailed and it gives a very good soundstage and things are in the right place. I am a bass head and am very picky about it. The bass doesn't draw attention to itself and by saying this you may think that it is therefore lacking....not at all. It goes pretty deep, and maybe at it's lowest is just a tad soft, but this is not a criticism. Thoroughly recommended with the caveat that I can only relay what I have heard with the components I have used with it.