Here is another:
Digital do MaiN B-1a amplifier (made in the 2000's) inspired by the 1970's Yamaha B-1 legend.
The Yamaha's own B-1 is a statement amplifier of all times. Unfortunately The Yamaha B-1 was a cost no object / lead-loss product. Yamaha likely never recovered the cost of Research and Development investment, hence they needed to build different siblings to increase gross sales (read B2 and B3). During the 80s economic crisis in Japan and rest of the world, and with the earlier introduction of Mosfets by Hitachi (which were much cheaper to produce), it was a lost business case for any major Japanese manufacturer to continue to produce v-fet amplifiers or preamplifiers.
That said, most of everyone that had the privilege to listen to a v-fet amplifier, knows that they provide one of the most engaging listening experience of new or old amps.
This was the case for a wealthy Japanese billionaire (Mr. Kazuhiko Nishi the founder of ASCII corporation) during the 2000's, who was so impressed with the original Yamaha B-1, enough to want to re-imagine a modern version of (modern by 2000s ). To be successful, Mr Nishi hired an old Yamaha Engineer and also hired the NEC foundry to produce a new version of the old B-1 v-fets, using NOS Yamaha silicon. The naming scheme of the new v-fets was just as that of the amplifier model, which was to add an "a" at the end of each v-fet model. For example, the old Yamaha output v-fets, the 2SK77, was named 2SK77a for the Digial do MaiN version.
As a result, the new Digital do MaiN B-1a is born as an Yamaha B-1 inspired amplifier that uses a relatively similar amplifier circuit, simpler protection circuit, a servo for dc balance, mono-block / BTL setup and and other thought to be improvements. In the end, the B-1a is an excellent amplifier. I own one of these rare birds and I can say that it sounds neither better or worse than the original Yamaha B-1, but that it sounds rather different.
Only a very limited number of the B-1a 's were produced, each was made as special order only and for a hefty price of about $10,000 (year 2000's dollars) each.
Eventually I will upload a video of the B-1a on my tube channel here:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbhA9G0JwKaxB_3Nyv0plCQ
In the meantime I am sharing some photos with the group.
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