John
Most hifi news announcements arrive via press release. Some are accompanied by a photo set. The modern trend is to link to photos hosted on Dropbox or Google Drive. If the manufacturer has their shit marketing budget together, we’ll get a choice of product shots taken from a range of angles and in-room lifestyle shots.
PrimaLuna’s latest announcement from company Founder Herman van den Dungen landed in the Darko.Audio inbox describing how fifty units of the new EVO 300-1* integrated amplifier have already shipped out to distributors around the world. Crucially absent were the amplifier’s vital statistics.
For those, we look to the email’s attachments only to find a Prima Luna bio, the new model’s specifications sheet, a company logo and two photos of the EVO Hybrid’s front (but none of its backside). Perhaps not having a marketing bod on staff is how Prima Luna minimises its outgoings to pass those savings onto its customers. However, does this haphazard announcement not undersell the company’s reputation as a manufacturer of some of the world’s best value – and most loved – tube amplifiers?
As its name suggests, the EVO 300 Hybrid isn’t an all tube affair but a hybrid. The pre-amplifier stage featuring 6 x 12AU7 tubes was designed by Prima Luna and is connected to a MOSFET output stage engineered by Floyd Design to deliver more power than your average push-pull: 100wpc into 8 Ohms, 150wpc into 4 Ohms.
Floyd Design?
From the .pdf bio: “Floyd Design has been Durob’s (PrimaLuna’s) Solid State Design department for almost 20 years! This department, headed by Jan de Groot, has been servicing, designing and modifying solid- state circuits since 2002! Jan has a long history and great experience with JFETs and Mosfets. After having been Service Manager from 1986 to 1995 for Luxman, Thorens, AirTight, B&W in The BeNeLux, he became responsible in 1995 for the design and production of Sphinx, a famous Dutch audio brand at the time. In 2002 Jan started to work for Durob Audio, participating in the real-world experience of distribution and servicing, repairing, modifying solid-state reference brands like Krell, Cello, Dartzeel, D’Agostino and more. All these experiences bring you now a new range of reliable, high-quality audio products. Floyd Design! High Quality “Soft” Solid State at a fair, no-nonsense price. Like with PrimaLuna, we firmly believe that Floyd’s quality level will set the bar at a difficult height for other products to match.”
According to that same spec sheet, on the EVO 300-1’s back panel sit loudspeaker binding posts, a tape output, stereo/mono subwoofer outputs, five single-ended RCA inputs and a home theatre input. On the front panel, we see a 6.4mm headphone socket.
From the spec sheet: “All PrimaLuna products come with PrimaLuna Silver Label tubes which are pre-selected by us following our simple 60 out of 100 rule (PTSTM – Premium Tube Selection) and as such, are already “special” when compared to other standard tubes on the market.”
At the time of writing, the EVO 300 Hybrid has yet to make it to PrimaLuna’s website. Pricing is also TBA. If the name of your email game is new product awareness, detail that new product before telling us about your history and achievements in audio. Help me help you.
Further information: PrimaLuna
