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High-end Monoblock Sweetness!

qboneus

qboneus

Senior Member
After the self destruction of my new modern monster integrated's power transformer under light load I had the option of rebuild or exchange.
I exchanged towards these pretty 'little' "high end" 200 WPC April Music Stello monoblocks.
Apparently pretty rare, maybe because they initially cost $4K and are relatively unknown in the States.
were a dealer demo and come with warranty!:banana:
enough talk, On to the pictures!
after this, you've been as far as I have with them as they just came out of the back of a 7 degree F Fed-Ex Truck and with me being concerned about condensation I'm going to let them come to temperature before powering up later tonight.

Pictured on cornwall III's for size reference
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now the ones you've been waiting for..
The Nekkid ones!


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More, Better quality pictures to follow as well as initial sonic impressions.
tal
 
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Nice simple design, I can't wait to see how they sound.
Regards,
Jim
 
They look nicer than the Calaf anyway. Seems like you're coming out on the winning end of this debacle. :thmbsp:

And you're right, never even heard of the brand, although those monoblocks look more than adequate for the job!!! Congrats.
 
Nice clean design with XLR inputs, me like. They do look like they may be Class D or tripath or something, what type of amp is it?
 
April Music Stello M200 Monoblocks

I have not investigated the outputs yet, just getting them set up right now for an initial test run after being aclimated for 6 hours to come to room temp.

I would think possibly ice-tripath wouldn't be out of the question as i had seen some of their line run tripath, I believe.

Each has a 1KW transformer with 94,000 uf of capacitance in the main filter banks.
one review stated I believe 345W@4 Ohm, of which my SDA's are so they should provide PLENTY of power.

I'm pretty excited right about now.:banana:

The Amps are April Music Stello M200 monoblocks.
Specs off of internet:

Input sensitivity 0.83 V, 200 W into 8 Ohms
Signal-to-noise ratio 10 to 20 kHz, -100 dB
THD 0.005% at 30 W into 8 Ohms
Inputs 1 pair RCA/unbalanced, 1 pair XLR/balanced
Power output 200 w into 8 Ohms
Power requirement 100/117/220/230/240 V, 50 or 60 Hz
Dimensions (mm) 300W x 150H x 447D
Weight 15 kg each

off to finish hooking them up.
Initial review and hopefully more information will follow.
Thanks for the compliments, i'm quite optimistic about my lemonade from lemons deal!:thmbsp:
tal
 
Very nice Indeed! You really came out on the good end on this deal! Can`t wait to hear your Impressions of how they sound after you get them broken in and setup.
 
That's too bad about your blown amp, especially something brand new. I hope you have a better experience with the monoblocks :tresbon:
 
Excellent Sounding Gear!!!

Well, had a little listen time last night and they definitely ARE better sounding than the Calaf.
Being mono amplifiers I can not properly drive the Polks SDA array as it requires a common ground amplifier so I am currently driving my Castle Stirling 3's with the stello's, accompanied an Anthony Gallow tr-2 sub to supplement the castle3's.

I cannot accurately fully compare the Calaf to the Mono's on an A/B because the mono's aren't completely compatible with my polks which were the calaf's mains.

but The Stellos are definitely smoother in the midrange and offer a more detailed presentation than either the Calaf or my Nak Pa7
It is a "wideband" amplifier with a Frequency Response 10Hz - 45kHz and +-3dB.
I can't exactly quantify the best way for me to describe but it just sounds to me as if it has more range and headroom as well.. slightly akin to cruising the highway with a high performance V-8 when you are used to operating a tricked out 6; not Hugely, Drastically different but you know and feel those extra two cylinders even while cruising would be my analogy as poor as it may be.
I hope to get much more listen time tonight and will follow up my initial impressions then.
Looks like this deal worked out after all.......
cheers,
tal
 
Well, to me it seems like your analogy makes sense. For one, the Calaf had a faulty transformer so I would think there is a slight chance it wasn't working to its full potential.

And more importantly, monoblocks do have that awesome advantage of having tremendous headroom. Good stuff! If I wasn't a broke college student these would be on my list.

Crazy idea, but couldn't you tie the negative leads of the Polks together for use with the monoblocks in a sort of "pseudo-common-ground" configuration? Someone back me up here... :scratch2:
 
Nice! I agree with what was said above, your old unit was probably not performing it's best since the day you brought it home.
 
zenith2134 said:
Well, to me it seems like your analogy makes sense. For one, the Calaf had a faulty transformer so I would think there is a slight chance it wasn't working to its full potential.

And more importantly, monoblocks do have that awesome advantage of having tremendous headroom. Good stuff! If I wasn't a broke college student these would be on my list.

Crazy idea, but couldn't you tie the negative leads of the Polks together for use with the monoblocks in a sort of "pseudo-common-ground" configuration? Someone back me up here... :scratch2:
Click to expand...
Not sure, but I'm too scared to try it for fear of damaging the amps.
I believe there is a workaround utilizing transformers of some kind to enable the ability to use the sda's with mono's but I haven't researched it yet.

Odds are you guys are correct about the calaf's performance suffering because of the tranny, but it DID sound damn good, the best SOUNDING integrated I have ever had; unfortunately it wasn't built to last.(at least MINE wasn't)
the castles sound really good driven by the Stello's and are able to outperform the SDA's in much except obviously some bass extension and that w i d e SDA soundstage.
The TR-2 fixes the bass issue and surprisingly, I am temporarily enjoying the increased stereo separation enough that I'm not missing the SDA's as much as I though I might.(my wife REALLY doesn't miss them residing in the den however she has informed me)

Maybe this is just a good time to upgrade my tweeters as I think some damage was done to one when the calaf tranny blew taking some Output's along with it.
I know Polk still sells the tweeters so no sweat there.
tal
 
Very happy with the stello's after living with them for a few days.
In addition to the earlier mentioned attributes; I am hearing nuances from my music that I wasn't even aware were on the recording earlier.
I'm grooving on APC and tool through these, Both bands albums are recorded/mixed/mastered well and can really show you something on a high resolution system...which I have Thought I had multiple times, but upgrade after upgrade, my system just keeps getting better with these being the pinnacle of amplification for me at the current time.
it would appear that these will be hard to beat given my particular budget; and I would have never even noticed them if my calaf hadn't erupted.
I will have to take some decent pictures to do them justice and post them later next week; as my blackberry camera combined with my photography skills make for crappy pictures.
happy listening,
tal
 
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