Steve Harris and Paul Miller

The original ‘Electro’ was a milestone design, even if it was not quite what it seemed. Does this legendary 25W pre/power combination really live up to its cult status? Back in 1966, a Norwegian pop band called Mojo Blues topped the local charts with their first single, a cover of The Stones’ ‘Lady Jane’. They followed up with more hits, but eventually disbanded. By 1972, Mojo Blues’ frontman Per ‘Abe’ Abrahamsen had started Electrocompaniet as a small business, importing cheap Bulgarian speakers and building basic PA electronics.

Though outwardly unchanged, a serious internal makeover has brought Karan's cool-looking pre/power duo up-to-date. But how do these revised models sound? here must be many audiophiles who are torn between valve and solid-state amplification. If you are attracted to the sound of valves, but hesitate to take the plunge for practical reasons, you’ll be interested in solid-state products which try to offer the best of both worlds. And that’s part of the promise held out by the Karan amplifier line, which is built in the Republic of Serbia and has been gathering a following in several other countries since around 2000.

Taking advantage of Ortofon’s latest cartridge range update, Pro-Ject offers a new keenly-priced plug-and-play turntable package that promises moving-coil bliss There’s always been a strand of hi-fi culture that says you have to suffer to be beautiful, an idea that you just have to go through a lot of mixing and matching, and twiddling and tweaking, to get good sound from the old vinyl LP. If you’re prey to this kind of thinking, an all-in-one, plug-and-play record deck solution just seems too easy. But why fight it, when the manufacturer will do it all for you? Pragmatic as ever, Pro-Ject offers a huge range of package options, from its basic Debut series upwards. If you’re just trying to stop your spending going much into four figures, you can try a package in the more refined Xperience series.

Outstanding hi-fi products have never been designed by committee. They nearly always originate in the mind of one very gifted individual, like the late Dr Noboru Tominari. Dr Tominari was a professor of engineering at Tokyo State University when he launched the Dynavector company in 1975. He developed the first successful high-output moving-coil, which did not need a special step-up device but worked with the moving-magnet phono input that was then standard on every hi-fi amplifier.