I am now delighted to announce the arrival of a pair of Supratek Malbec mono block power amplifiers and a Supratek Sauvignon line stage pre-amplifier. And after a forced five day delay, both are now installed the the listening room.

Sauvignon & Malbecs in place - 2007

The Sauvignon is a two box line stage, offering balanced and single ended inputs, remote volume control, home theatre bypass, high/medium/low input sensitivity control and a mute function. One box is for a separate power supply which connects to the other by a supplied umbilical cord. The Malbecs are 40 wpc EL34 push / pull mono blocks. They contain variable gain control, adjustable negative feedback circuitry, tunable damping factors and 4/8 ohm speaker taps. Unpacking and initial configuration was relatively straight forward once the manual appropriately consulted. My pieces have Jarrah wood chassis with matt black tops. Hand made in Margaret River, Western Australia, the Sauvignon and Malbec certainly look the business!

(Supratek Sauvignon Pre-Amplifier)

I have been without tunes for a few weeks, and all supporting components had been off power for a number of days. Plus, I thought I would experiment with balanced connections from the Wadia to the Sauvignon, so new Kimber SilverStreak XLR cable was installed. The cold components, new pre/power combo and a new cable meant the system was never going to sound at it's best from the get go.

(Supratek Malbec Mono Block)

And it didn't. Initial listening impressions were both positive and negative. The positives included increased clarity and detail with a couple of discs revealing some content I don't previously remember hearing. Vocals were more forward rather than slightly recessed as previously making them more engaging. Excellent progress! The downsides so far revolve around a slight thickening of the overall image and the sound is lacking in pace and attack.

Post Installation photo of 'The Big Rig' - 2007

There is no doubt that the new components will develop over the near term when they get a few hundred hours on them. I have some time on my hands over the coming weeks to sit back, relax and fine tune the new system. As previously mentioned, the Malbecs offer a significant amount of user configuration, with speaker damping and negative feedback user definable to adapt specific parameters to my sources, speakers and room. And I have a number of questions ready to fire off to Mick Maloney at Supratek to further increase my understanding (and subsequent enjoyment) of these splendid components.

The reality of being part of 'Club Supratek' is exciting and I will post further listening comments shortly.