Pre/Power Amplifiers

During our review, editor Paul Miller took the opportunity to talk with Bricasti's President, Brian Zolner. Hot topic was the apparent contradiction between the technical transparency of the M20 preamp versus its subjective impact on the sound of the amplifier combination in our listening tests.

'Many recordings are made with a lot of "top end" and compression so we avoided adding more distortion and presence', Brian explained. 'We use the minimum gain – about 3dB in the balanced path with an extra 6dB for the RCA input. In practice we use separate buffers for these balanced and single-ended stages – a mix of fully discrete output circuits and inputs using high slew rate/fast settling op-amps. The RCA and balanced inputs/outputs can be treated separately if so desired.'

Minimising microphony is also core to the mechanical build of the M20. 'We took great care to reduce micro vibrations', recalled Brian, 'the case is cut from aluminium and even the PCB standoffs are milled into the chassis, providing solid contact to the bottom plate for the PCBs and PSUs. Even our linear regulators are mounted directly to the chassis.'

Finally, we had to ask about the vivid violet anodising inside the M20 and M25! 'We sub-contract all our anodising to a plating house, and these guys had a purple tank as well as clear and platinum. So we thought "Hey, let's use some purple inside the amps just in case anyone lifts the lid".' If nothing else, Brian's decision certainly brightened up the four pages of this feature review!