Musical Fidelity A1 experiences

Hi

I had an A1 for a number of years. It had the usual problems with a noisy pot that required spraying evry couple of weeks and high case temps. I heard the A1 with many speakers but the best synergy to my ears was with a pair of Arcam 2 speakers

Cheers

Yeah - I dont think this new A1 has a pot. It may be using some buffer / digital-relay type of contraption.

The old A1 was pretty famous for some reliability problems. My instinct is that Antony Michaelson is not as much of a cheapskate nowadays, given that his company has a lot more momentum than it did back in 1984 when the original A1 rolled out.

However, sub-standard volume pots are the industry standard in hi-fi. There are very few manufacturers that abhor them (Ayre, Tom Evans, and Gryphon come to mind). After having a few bad experiences with cheap pots, anytime I seek out a higher priced linestage / preamp / volume-control; I make sure that I know what kind of pot they're using in that component before I buy it.

I currently own the newer version of the A1. I have it paired with Klipsch Heresy's and also a REL Strata III subwoofer. This is my first Hi-Fi system and I am blown away with the performance I am getting out of it.