Best used integrated under $5k

marrduk24

i am curious to hear what the dealer you mentioned, who carries luxman hegel and sim says about their respective integrated amp offerings

and to the one poster above -- i am sorry but no the hegels do not sound thin at all, if anything they have a bit more body in the midrange than most good ss amps ...

...what the hegels do have is a very very high damping factor, so they can lean out the bass of some underdamped coned speakers that can sound bloated when driven by lesser amps - that can lead one to think the hegel sounds lean/thin driving 'x' speaker...

naims are highly rhythmic but they are actually brighter and a bit more harsh than hegels

@marrduk24

responding to your reply earlier - i did not mean to say that the hegel h360 does not have a DAC (it certainly does)

what I meant to say is that the current gen hegels have specifically improved the DAC sections of the units over the prior gen ... thus, if you do not have a need to use the DAC in the H360, it is a good value used as an amplifier

conversely, if you wanted to use the onboard DAC, then best to get the latest gen H390 or H590 as these will provide the cleanest D to A conversion that Hegel offers

...either way, you are correct, you will need a separate phono stage if using a Hegel... they only have line level RCA inputs

sorry for my sloppy writing :)

and BTW - no affiliation here with Hegel... just a very happy and very impressed customer...

Hegels are outstanding.  If you don't need the internal DAC then a used 360 would be very good.  If the onboard DAC is important, then get the new 390.  I love mine.  Best solid state I have heard in a quite a while.