For a moment, let's dream of the impossible: a 100wpc DC-coupled single-ended single-stage amp of 20dB voltage gain which combines a tube and transistor. How could silicon and glass not add up to more than one gain stage? If that's where our dream rudely awakes to reality, NAT Audio of Serbia say, keep on dreaming. Their Magneto Evo claims to have done all that we asked. A 6CW4 nuvistor tube somehow "embeds" or "interleaves" with a high-power gold-plated FET capable of 1'800'W dissipation. This compound device manages 5Hz-100kHz bandwidth and uses custom air-core inductors to generate 4Ω and 8Ω outputs. It claims pure class A auto bias into 100W at just 220W of power draw. It claims load tolerance from 1-32Ω. It runs 100'000µF of military-grade Teflon capacitance. It eschews a PCB for point-to-point wiring. It weighs a whopping 53kg.
Could it be real? Dejan Nikic of Serbia's Kragujevac designed it and sells it so it must be, mustn't it? Actually, the Aries Cerat Ianus Protos from Cyprus has very similar talking points if only 20wpc but this idea of going as simple as possible with a tube hybrid clearly has struck different designers as plausible and most attractive…
NAT Audio's product page
