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All sweet? Not really. It didn't take long to be reminded. Sweetness and bipolars don't go hand in hand. That observation had led me to acquire ModWright's KWA-100SE (Mosfet) over their bigger KWA-150 amp (BJT). Now mated to my usual vertical power Jfets in costly silicon carbide of FirstWatt's SIT1 monos, there wasn't enough fleshiness and color warmth with Athena. As I'd put it in my review of Simon Lee's Aura Vita integrated based on Hitachi Mosfets, with the Danish/American combo "...I was still cruising for love. I preferred the $1.400 chrome box. The separates of Athena and SIT1 felt quite similar to the photo below. Focus was exceptional. This ultra-wide bandwidth gear resolved not only individual blades of the French window blinds, it captured the buildings on the street's other side without blurring my own room's contents. Yet the color palette was tonally washed out. True the treble was more refined and teased out and overall magnification power higher. But the price to pay—and for their combined €20.000 sticker one shouldn't agree to do so—was a certain emotional staleness.


"The Vita was like the next photo - stronger more vibrant colors. This produced more hereness without capturing anything outside the windows. Such visual:aural comparisons are fraught with shortcomings. In this instance the essential point seems nicely made however (both photos were shot with the same 14-42 nano-coated Lumix G lens). The path to ultra-fi narrows quickly to introduce many pitfalls. The essential balance is between meatiness and translucence. Enhance one, diminish the other. To increase both in tandem is the vexing aim..."

Once I made the 'mmh' connection, redemption was at hand. I needed Mosfets to partner with Athena and get my Aries Cerat Gladius speaker to sound its best. Be it ModWright's KWA-100SE or Bakoon's astonishing AMP-11R which otherwise resides on my nightstand anchoring an über headfi rig with Antelope Audio Zodiac Gold/Voltikus and Audez'e LCD-2, either amp gave me the saturation density and fleshiness I lacked before. With ultra resolving gear—wide bandwidth, direct-coupled, very low noise—straying from the middle path which has in-room presence and insight into an acoustic other than your own calibrated just so takes... well, virtually nothing. Here failure to ace it isn't a function of bad equipment. It's about over- or undershooting by a possibly very narrow margin.


Heightened resolving power simply magnifies offsets to become blatantly obvious rather than maybe yes/maybe no. To frame this point in the kitchen, a perfectly honed blade takes no pressure at all to finely slice a very juicy tomato. A dull blade meanwhile won't cut through the skin. Applying necessary pressure bursts the fruit and slices turn thicker by default. And Athena is a very sharp knife.

My ultimate in-house amp mate became the Bakoon whose capture of micro detail exceeds that of the burlier ModWright. The sound was exceptionally informative about recorded venue data yet didn't default into an electrostatic read that's all speed but no curves. On a live Yannis Parios concert cut, the ambient difference between his on-stage solo microphone feed versus the vast audience singing the chorus was maximally exposed. Idy Diop's Afrobeat had terrific rhythmic articulation like tapping glass with long nails not fleshy finger tips. Rip-roaring Balkan brass showed highly polished harmonic brilliance as did the very fine cymbal work of the Jacques Loussier Trio's drummer.

To extricate, what dominated were beat fidelity (what Brit speak calls PRaT or rhythm, pace and timing); powerful ambient recovery; and a very lit-up top end that rendered transients with full harmonic weight. This had obvious repercussions for the soundstage particularly in the depth domain and with image focus which didn't diffuse even during dense passages. Relative left/right placement and front to back was very specific and equally locked close and far. Key clacks and finger work on strings had that charged tacitness one recognizes from mundane daily noises which surround us. Encoded musical energy was clearly charged and quicksilvery, that second quality most keen on live recordings.


What in these proceedings came second were mass and textures. For mass ModWright's LS-100 with Psvane's very best CV-181 rules my personal preamp collection. For textures it and the super-expensive Concert Fidelity (with Psvane 12AU7, in house on short-term reader loan) shared the crown. On mass the Gryphon was lighter, on textures it was blunter. To soften these textures more than with the Bakoon, I merely had to strap on the ModWright power amp. This also added mass at the expense of some rear-stage illumination whilst incisiveness mellowed into a bit more leisureliness. Gear of Athena caliber is built for speed not comfort. That makes it very responsive to ancillary changes. Such transparency to alterations equals core neutrality. And neutrality is always easier tracked by chameleon response rather than what neutrality sounds like per se.


'Compensating' such a component with another that's very deeply into the high-mass thing would be the equivalent of towing a trailer with a Mazda Miata. My advice to those thinking Athena too bluish cool or slightly aloof as I did at first is to reach for a Mosfet amp. Whilst you couldn't call the Korean Bakoon misty or languid by any stretch—in many aspects it's rather an Athena soul mate—the simple small fact that its output devices are (Exicon) Mosfets struck me as the reason why that somewhat Nordic color tinge of the sound enjoyed an immediate sunnier injection of yellow like the photo above. Instead of stifling any reflexes, the tone colors simply grew warmer and the sense of saturation and physicality increased. Based on my track record with valve gear, I'd consider most tube amps that horse trailer behind our sporty Danish coupé.


If it were me and you wanted more sonic texturization than the Gryphon provides even with a good Mosfet amp, I'd go after a valve preamp, not tubes in the amp which could hit these particular brakes too hard. At €24.000 the Concert Fidelity seems grossly overpriced and criminally underfeatured (two people I know paid €6.000 and €7.500 respectively which seems about right) but sonically it's very much an Athena on glass. The one that got away—a valve pre I remember as a true colossus to this day and wish I could have afforded at the time—was the €15.000 Thorens TEP3800 I reviewed a few years go. Frank Blöhbaum designed it as a fully DC-coupled cross-shunt p/p or circlotronic all-tube circuit with properly balanced volume control. In either case though you'd exceed Gryphon's budget for the Athena.

Conclusion. Gryphon's Athena delivers exactly what her specs predicted all along - a very quick supremely nuanced deftly articulated sound that puts a microscope on hall ambiance and a roto rooter down clogged drains. In keeping with her appearance of understated but elegant two-tone shiny and matte black with green display, performance is sophisticated, slightly cool and very sorted whilst socketry and remote provisions should account for most uses. It's of course fair to add that quality modern DACs with proper attenuation—some even sport analog inputs—can eliminate costly preamps from the equation altogether. In that sense Athena and the preamp breed in general are legacy carryovers. But in keeping with that old-school perspective, Gryphon still offer no DAC nor do their digital players do USB or any other digital input. The company seems happy to serve well-off audiophiles who view computer audio, headfi and sundry misbegotten stuff as newfangled fashion items that'll be (good riddance!) gone tomorrow. For that audience the Gryphon Athena would seem to be a Platinum Club member at a silver-level entry fee. If you want in, this could be your ticket. And as Flemming Rasmussen let on, at Munich 13 they'll be introducing a very sophisticated DAC with all the bells and whistles so whilst not being "a 'first with the latest' driven company", they're "not entirely a T Rex company catering for aging audiophiles".
Quality of packing: Very good.
Reusability of packing: A few times.
Ease of unpacking/repacking: A cinch.
Condition of component received: Flawless.
Completeness of delivery: Perfect. Includes power cord, remote with batteries, owner's manual binder, complete company catalogue, white gloves and a polishing cloth and compound for the acrylic surfaces.
Human interactions: Good.
Pricing: A luxury brand's most cost-effective preamp model makes it expensive but no more so than equivalent competition.
Final comments & suggestions: Lacks balance control, polarity inversion and headphone output. The volume control isn't balanced so the XLR input is first converted to single-ended before dual-differential gain processing commences past the attenuator resistor/relay array. The touch-sensitive acrylic fascia is naturally prone to fingerprints.
Gryphon website