For sale is my very rare HiEnd Musical Fidelity Nu Vista Pré amp. The Nuvista use the very specialised miniature 6CW4 Nuvistor triode developed in the late 60 for military use and Musical Fidelity has made a very nice looking preamp around them. Since there were very few of the nuvistor tubes left, Musical Fidelity has bougth all the world remaining stock of them. Only 500 preamps has been built in all. There are only one sets of reserve Nuvistors for each amp, but since the Nuvistors last for about 100,000 hours it will be enough I think. The amp lost its original remote but it's not necessary to fully operate the amp. Replacement remotes can be ordered on the net if you really want to use such a thing. All original documents and a rare original copy of HiFi News are included. It also comes with it's original box but the filling wil be adapted. The 2 Nuvistor triode valves have been replaced with 2 NOS original's!! The sound of the preamp is as good as you can get. For a lengthy review I recommend the magazine HI-Fi News & Record Review (availably on the net) where HiFi-guru Ken Kessler raves about this amp. Some extracts from this review: Anthony Michaelson knows how to push the right buttons. All he had to say was the word ‘nuvistor’, and every tube crazy worth his weight in anode plates was clamouring for a listen. After all, wasn’t the nuvistor the last-ever, all-new tube, conceived just as the transistor turned life into shit? ‘Last-ever all-new tube’ – strong words. But they’re true, and all of those ‘KT’ variants, the myriad 300B derivatives…they’re not all-new tubes but modified alternatives souped up for modern needs. (Think about it: the guy who comes up with a 300B which puts out some serious wattage and doesn’t have bass like a whoopee cushion can order his next Ferrari.) The nuvistor was/is the missing link between valves and trannies, a ‘sub-miniature triode’ that’s all-tube, only teensy-weensy. Like the up to the first joint of your little finger. And it is a tube, not a transistor, only one encased in metal. The 6CW4 nuvistor triode is roughly equivalent to a Lilliputian ECC88, the ’88 being one of the most highly regarded pre-amp tubes in use today. Now, imagine if you could enjoy the bliss of an ECC88 without the size, the fragility, the heat – you know, all of the stuff which transistors offer while throwing away the sound. Designed for use mainly in military applications and for measuring equipment such as oscilloscopes, the nuvistor was metal-clad to provide magnetic shielding, and its other qualities included low noise, low microphony, terrific linearity, consistency, long life – you know, everything which could combine the create the ideal ‘fantasy’ valve. So why wasn’t it a success? Simple: bad timing. In the 1950s, solid-state technology was rearing its ugly little head, and it quickly developed into the cool-running, low-cost alternative to something which makes music. Had the nuvistor arrived 10 years earlier, it might have been a different story. Anyway, the nuvistor was all but ignored by the audio industry, and the only company which I have been able to identify with any certainty as having used it is conrad-johnson. The nuvistor would have remained nearly-forgotten until Anthony Michaelson was reminded of its unfulfilled promise. So he went out and pretty much bought up the world’s remaining supplies. His travails in merely acquiring enough nuvistors to make sufficient numbers of a specific model would make interesting reading, but space precludes it. Suffice to say, none of the tube suppliers took him seriously until he produced the funds up front to prove his intent. Hey, presto – thousands of the little gems were suddenly on their way to Olympic Trading Estate, enough to put four in each of the 500 examples he will produce of the Nu-Vista pre-amplifiers, with Musical Fidelity keeping in storage a complete set of replacement nuvistors for each one; this accounts for 4000 of the little bleeders. So, unlike other artificial ‘limited editions’, the Nu-Vista is a genuine collector’s item, its numbers restricted because of the availability of key components, not some marketing man’s notion of a lucky number. Anthony admits that he was inspired in part by various watch brands — Chronoswiss and Oris, for example – which discovered small, unused supplies of vintage mechanisms, creating new models to house them, all severely limited due to the number of original works. So what has been wrapped around this quartet of My Little Pony tubes? A Pure Class-A Pre-amplifier. But this is no hair-shirt atrocity aimed at psychotics. Hell, no. Think back to June to the X-A1 review, and how cool and funky was that extruded lozenge-shaped delight. The Nu-Vista is housed in the same enclosure, only with its power supply in a proper X-Series cylinder instead of a cheapo-cheapo black plastic lump. And the two look just right side-by-side. Nu-Vista provides five line level inputs, a tape loop and a phono section derived partly from the X-Tract, all fed by gold-plated phono sockets. Its hands-on operational bits consist of volume control, tape monitor button and source selector, with power-on courtesy of a button on the front of the power supply cylinder; the latter connects to the main chassis through an umbilical cord with a locking XLR-type plug. At 230mm wide, the Nu-Vista, like the X-A1, has been styled to resemble two Siamese-twinned X-Series cylinders. But the Nu-Vista is no hi-fi-for-the-fiscally-challenged, pocket-money tchatchke. No way. To add a touch of elegance, to distinguish it from its bargain-basement siblings, the Nu-Vista features sculpted recesses around all of the controls and lights, the press buttons feel nicer to use, the knobs are like jewellery. It’s not what you expect. Hell, nothing can prepare you for the Nu-Vista, because hardly any of us really knew what a nuvistor could do, outside of the aforementioned c-j phono duties. And it isn’t even the Nu-Vista’s phono stage – set up for moving magnets and high output m-cs – which impresses the most. Sure, it has bags of headroom and it’s deathly quiet and uncoloured. But that applies to the entire Nu-Vista experience. Quite simply, the Nu-Vista undermines every product (and, for that matter, every review) which has been based on achieving successful sonic marriages betwixt tube and tranny. You know the drill: certain modern MOSFET designs which emulate valves, certain valve designs which possess solid-state control. And hasn’t that been the basis of the quest for the last 30 years? To find an operating device which gives us – truly – the best of both worlds? Haven’t all of us been looking for a solid state amp with valve’s musical virtues and gentle clipping under duress, or valve amps with a transistor’s control down below and ghostly silences when required? The slap in the face, the irony from which we should never recover, is that the nuvistor had it all. But the sound! Life-like vocals with all of those little clues: the sound of tongue touching teeth, breathiness, smooth ‘S’ sounds. Bass with just the right resonance, yet no overhang. Acoustic guitars with woody ambience. Brass with punch and sparkle. But most of all, a sense of effortlessness which allows music to flow, yet with enough control to keep it in check…as required. The Nu-Vista is, if you’ll forgive this rather sordid analogy, both your slave and your dominatrix… Now the serious stuff: The first 300 were pre-ordered before production commenced, so move quickly. The 500-only run of the forthcoming hybrid power amplifier – 300 watts! 100amps! — uses up the remaining supplies of nuvistors and it will be offered first to existing Nu-Vista owners, giving them the opportunity to buy the units with the serial numbers matching their pre-amps. Only those not taken up by Nu-Vista pre-amp owners will be made available for the rest of you. Horrible thought: What if all of the original 500 Nu-Vista owners opt for the power amps, and someone wants to bi-amplify? By the way, I placed a firm order for a Nu-Vista within one hour of switching on the review sample. I asked for serial no. 046. Oh, and I have already started saving for its partnering amplifier. (Hi-Fi News & Record Review, August 1998) SPECS: POWER OUTPUT: 300 watts per channel into 8 Ohms, 600 watts per channel into 4 Ohms, 1000 watts per channel into 2 Ohms, THD < 0.005% at 1KHz < 0.008% 20Hz - 20KHz unweighted < 0.003% 20Hz - 20KHz “A” weighted FREQUENCY RESPONSE: 10Hz - 56KHz + 1dB INPUT SENSITIVITY: 1.5V (for full output) INPUT IMPEDANCE: 100KOhm S/N RATIO: > 88dB ‘A’ weighted (Ref 1W) > 113dB ‘A’ weighted (Ref 300W) POWER CONSUMPTION: 1.2KW Max DIMENSIONS Amplifier: 330 x 170 x 490 (W x H x D) Power supply: 330 x 170 x 490 (W x H x D)