Well after much wrangling with my conscience, and trying to work out if I was doing the right thing I have made not one but TWO changes to my system in a short space of time, actually I suppose three really.

My best friend of over 40 years who is also into Hifi has recently been going through various upgrades to his system over the last, as a result he offered me his Vienna Acoustic Mozart SE's speakers which he had not used for about 3 years due to buying others for his system and he had just not got round to selling them. Well I thought I would give them a go and it seemed like the right time as my better half had started making noises about the H2's in the living room. So I collected the Mozart's in early January from my friends, and whilst there we listened to them with his amplifier, an ALLNIC T1500, and they worked very well together.

Anyway I took them home and set them up with my amps, and I was rather pleased with the result but I felt something was missing from what I heard at my friends with his ALLNIC. Yes they worked well with my amps but I just felt some detail and clarity was not quite as good. So an amp itch was started.

The Mozart's were a surprise and work very well in our lounge, I have them 4.5' from the wall behind and the bass is good, they are slightly warmer than the H2's but are a very detailed, musical and easy to listen to, so they are here to stay.

After a week or so of listening to all sorts of music my feelings remained the same with respect to the amp and I discussed with my friend. He suggested I talked with Richard at Lotus HiFi where he got his amp from in case he had a demo one for sale or might be able to look out for one for me. So I sent Richard an email explaining, he responded "No sorry the ALLNIC amplifiers hardly ever come back or get PX'd for an upgrade and I only have one on demo which I need to keep. What do you have and what would you like to do?". So after some thought I told Richard about my Renaissance amps and I did not want to part to part with much cash, if any, so I told him about my Wilson Benesch ARC's (last pair made,virtually mint sat upstairs unused) as well. Richard went off and did a bit of investigation, and after only 24 hours Richard came back with a great deal for a brand ALLNIC T1500, PXing my gear. So I took the plunge and said yes and a few days later took my gear to Richard, I then just had to wait 5-6 weeks for the ALLNIC to be made and sent from Korea. Richard was very helpful and it was a pleasure doing business with him.

So the result is below, the ALLNIC T1500 MKII arrived yesterday by UPS via Lotus HiFi. My friend and neighbour put it in place for me replacing the Vincent (on loan from my friend) as I am currently recovering from a heart triple bypass operation nearly 3 weeks ago, so cannot lift more that 5-6lbs at the moment.

Well I am rather pleased and surprised by the T1500 even new out the box it is an improvement on the RA-01's, which I thought would be hard to achieve.

The key reasons are:-

  • Great and improved mid range, making for a better overall tone
  • Bass has tremendous definition, depth and control
  • There is more detail across the frequency range
  • I think there is better attack and clarity as a result


So putting all the above together I think the ALLNIC T1500 is a rather special amp and would take some serious beating which I suspect would involve a serious spend. Considering I have just taken it out the box and set it up and played a few songs and the radio for about an hour before doing some serious listening I think the result is very impressive. I also have yet to put in my PsVane 300B’s which I presume will give an even better result (we shall see). For now I will continue as is and enjoy the music. If you are in the market for a integrate single ended 300B then you would be well advised to give one of these a listen, they are very well made and sound fabulous IMO.

I actually think I may be reaching the end of the HiFi upgrade road for me. I am still tinkering with my TT which sounds pretty good, but I I to decide if I can improve it with a better cartridge or not. The issue is if I buy another cartridge it could be an issue if I then change TT and ARM as well, but that depends. I have a couple of TT's in mind both either of which I would probably buy a new arm as well, so if I change cartridge on the way I just need to ensure it would work in either I suppose in case I end up going for another TT/ARM combo. But financially that won't be happening for a while.