You can't criticize manufacturers for responding to a change in

tastes. CD has forever changed the face of hi-fi, so all you're

doing when you mourn the passage of the phono stage is increase
the value of shares in sackcloth and ashes. Instead, be thankful
that the companies in the high end who know how to read the
leaves in the cup are intent on making the best line stage
amplifiers they can design; what you use for a phono section can
be either your existing, pre-CD pre-amp or an outboard phono
section. With this in mind, Bill Beard has launched an all-valve,
line-level-only integrated amplifier, the first product to bear
his new company's name.

Briefly, Bill has left Beard Audio (which will continue with the
existing range of separates) to form British Built Audiophile
Products. Although the new units will differ in many ways from
the designs he produced over the past 12 years, all will continue
in the tradition established by such classics as the P100
amplifier. As stated in the literature, the amplifiers produced
by British Built Audiophile Products (or BBAP for short) will
offer superb sound and build quality at sensible prices. If the
BB100 under review is indicative of what may follow, we might at
last be seeing the emergence of a full range of real-world,
UK-made tube electronics.

The BB100 is a hefty, single-chassis item designed to bring out
the hi-fi casualty in all of us. With or without the protective
cage in place, the BB100 shouts 'Valves!' because you can see all
18 a'glowing. This conservatively-rated 2x50-watter derives its
power from three parallel 'push-pull' pairs EL84s per channel,
presenting a very low (2.6k ohm) output impedance to the output
transformer for easier driving conditions. The valves are lined
up like soldiers behind a complement of four ECC 81s and two
ECC82s in the pre-amp section. Each channel in the pre-amp
employs one ECC81 in the driver stage, another '81 as a phase
splitter and the '82 as a cathode follower. The heaters for every
valve in the BB100 are fully DC regulated. To prevent paranoia
among those of you who think that valves are a recipe for
ensuring your local repairman's fiscal health, the BB100 has been
designed to make valve amp ownership a set-and-forget exercise.

For openers, all of the valves are common, inexpensive and
durable; just ring PM Components if you don't believe me. Then,
to give you a visual confirmation of each valve's well-being, a
red LED next to each tube glows when the bottle ages toward
senility; this is achieved by measuring the amount of current
drawn by each valve. A brightly glowing LED means that you whip
out the valve and pop in a fresh one. 'What about biasing?' I
hear from those of you with incurable persecution complexes. No
sweat: the BB100 operates with a mix of grid and cathode biasing
to preclude the need for bias adjustments.

On a personal note, I find all the fear of adjusting bias to be
excessive and unnecessary. If I can do it, anyone can. On the
other hand, it's been explained to me by more than one
manufacturer that no matter how clear the instructions, some
brain-dead nebbish is going to set the bias incorrectly and
murder an innocent tube. The only reason that I even mention
this, since most would willingly trade the inconvenience of
manual adjusting for automatic biasing, is the slight trade-off
between cathode vs grid bias circuitry. With cathode biasing you
get the nice, sweet 'old valve' sound and automatic biasing,
whereas grid bias arrangements produce tight, crisp bass more
appealing to modern ears while requiring manual adjustment. BBAP
has employed a hybrid of the two which works beautifully, so I
suppose there's little sonic justification for grid-only biasing.

The BB100 is pretty much dual-mono throughout, with the only
shared aspects of the design being the single-piece, double-wound
mains transformer and a master gain control (whoopee!). The
latter, however, is a double-track knob, so the 'mono-ing' is
mechanical rather electronic. With the cage removed and the
controls facing you, the back third of the BB100's top surface
contains the mains transformer flanked by the separate output
transformers. These are wound and constructed to 1% tolerance and
are described as a '35% ultra-linear tap design', understressed
to require less feedback. The output section also employs 1300uF
reservoir capacitors for each channel. The driver stage is a high
current design with its own dedicated regulated DC power supply
of 4700uF per channel.

The BB100, despite its sensible pricing, is brimming with
designer goodies, of which 80% are purpose-made to BBAP
specifications. All capacitors are either polypropylene types or
low ESR electrolytics, mounted on a double-sided PCB employing
2oz copper tracks. For easier servicing, the main tracks and
components are positioned on one side of the board. Internal
wiring consists of computer data transmission cable, a solid core
type made from silver-plated copper. The BB100 uses separate star
earthing for each channel.

At the back of the amplifier are high-quality gold-plated input
sockets for CD, tape in and out, tuner, auxiliary and 'external
phono', two fuse holders, the on-off switch and Michell binding
posts which accept just about any connector you'd care to employ
short of a DIN speaker plug. Loaded it may be, but the front
panel re-affirms the minimalism of this design.

The profusion of knobs indicates dual-mono status rather than a
clutch of facilities. At the outer ends of the fascia are the
left and right source selectors which possess a nice feel and
positive detents. The centre of the panel contains the master
volume control as well as separate left and right gain controls
for 'fine-tuning'. Although most users will set these for best
overall sound and perform most operations with the master
control, users are advised to experiment.

Reminding me of the operation of the Audio Research SP-15, this
gain setting flexibility can be used to optimize the sound
according to the source. Phono via an external pre-amp, for
example, sounded best with the separate controls at the 12
o'clock position and the master control operation between 10 and
2, while directly injected CD was preferred with the gain
controls at around 9 o'clock. This provided the same arc of
operation as with phono and offered the best balance between
absolute sound quality and minimum noise -- not that the BB100
suffers from much of the latter.

Used with a variety of sources and the Audio Research SP-14
pre-amp as a phono stage, the BB100 was mated to speakers
including the Monitor Audio Studio 10, the Sonus Faber Electa
Amator, the JBL S119 and the Celestion SL700. The first thing I
learned is that most sane individuals will have a hard time
finding any speakers (of the sort likely to be paired with a #995
integrated amplifier) which this animal can't drive. Indeed, I'm
so confident about the BB100's ability to drive all manner of
systems that I'm looking forward to the arrival of the Apogee
Stage 'budget' model as a potential torture test. If ever there's
been a case of a power rating not indicating an amplifier's true
prowess, then it's the 50 watts accredited to the BB100.

Even more impressive for many will be its clear, unmuddied, taut
lower registers -- probably the best I've heard from any modern
valve amplifier at this price point. The extension proved far
greater than the capabilities of most of the speakers I employed,
hence the need to enlist the JBL S119, a speaker which had only
arrived a few days before writing this review. Despite being
unfamiliar with this unusual 'omni', I was able to exploit its
8in woofer and meter-high cabinet to find out what the BB100
would do with test tones, synth-generated bass and organ notes. I
believe my colleague Pete Clark would call this amp, in modern
parlance, a stonker.

All that the BB100 lacks in this area to threaten the big
(solid-state or valve) muthas which command far higher prices is
the kind of unbridled slam and absolute dynamics which you'd
expect to roll out of a kilo-watt's worth of Krell into something
like a Duntech Sovereign. With unnaturally bass-heavy, or more
precisely 'bass-dominant' recordings, the BB100 reaches its
limits in style, behaving much like the Wilson WATTs by acting
like a filter rather than falling apart. Instead of sounding
squashed or compressed, the BB100 simply stops, gracefully and
euphonically. That aside, it's more than enough, in the same way
that most cars can break the legal speed limit by at least 15mph.

This behaviour is consistent throughout, and it's especially
beneficial when you reach the uppermost frequencies. Amusingly,
it's here that the BB100 sounds most like an all-tube design,
because the highs positively shimmer. Many modern valve amps seem
to be conceived to ape the sound of solid-state electronics, for
the simple reason that an entire generation-plus grew up on the
latter and would find tube gear 'dull' or 'soft' rather than
'romantic' or 'sweet'. It may just be a matter of rhetoric or
conditioning, but it's something which must be addressed, so I
can understand the approach. But the BB100 is unashamedly a tube
amplifier where it counts, where tube characteristics are
strengths rather than weaknesses. And the results, should this
amplifier find its way into enough shops, could convert a number
of people who think that valves have something to do with
plumbing fixtures.

How Beard got 18 off-the-shelf valves to run so quietly I don't
know, but the silences are enough to confuse any who believe that
all valve amps are noisy. This in itself makes the rite of
passage painless for anyone born after 1958, and sales staff will
not have to resort to apologies while explaining the pros and
cons of valve ownership. Talk about an easy sale: all that the
BB100 requires of its owners is an understanding of the need for
ventilation, and anyone who's used solid-staters from Krell or
Musical Fidelity already knows where not to stack the cassette
deck. Which leaves us with the rest of the evidence presented to
one's ears.

The midband of the the BB100 is not a transitional point, a
crossover from firm bass to shimmering highs. These
characteristics are not as clearly delineated as mere verbal
descriptions imply. The midband, which is as precise and clear as
is required to produce accurate images, realistic positioning and
ambience and smear-free transparency, never approaches a level of
hygiene which suggests the clinical or the over-etched. In this
respect, it's almost as 'tube-y' as certain classics of yore, but
there's no added warmth to upset the overall accuracy. Rather
than showing concern for modernists in their initial approaches
to valve gear, perhaps I should worry more about traditionalists
who dread the thought of valve amps which are indistinguishable
from solid-state. They should know, then, that the midband of the
BB100 is one of the happiest compromises I've heard, more modern
than, say, the Air-Tight, but unlikely to be mistaken for a
anything from Salisbury.

Where the BB100 most belies its price and best illustrates its
valve heritage is in conveying air and openness. It's a
big-sounding amplifier, one which pushes back the walls and
pretends that your room can balloon at will. This is one of those
all-too-rare products that makes you want to listen more and
more, like a novel you just can't stop reading or -- better --
don't want to end. It does this because it's just so convincing
in so many ways.

I'm tempted to go mental over this beauty, everything from its
performance to its price to the pride of ownership it will confer
upon BBAP customers. But I'm also aware that I've yet to try it
with what might be natural partners, like the Celestion 3000, the
Apogee Stage, the Quad '63, the Martin-Logan Sequel and a number
of Maggies, and the company's own outboard phono stage won't be
launched until this issue hits the stands.

Could this really be me talking, trying to be cool, calm and
collected while witnessing what might be the birth of a milestone
in affordable high-end equipment? Exercising caution? Restraint?
Naaah... I just don't know how to convert the comic book image of
a mind being blown into mere prose.

Manufacturer's Specification:

Sensitivity (all inputs) variable 0-200mV for 50W
Input overload Unlimited
Power output 50W/channel RMS @ 8 ohms
Bandwidth 20-20kHz
Distortion:
(50W/8 ohms) 20Hz = 1.5% THD
1kHz = 0.4% THD
20kHz = 1.8% THD

(25W/8 ohms) 20Hz = 0.6% THD
1kHz = 0.1% THD
20kHz= 0.8% THD

(5W/8 ohms) 20Hz = 0.2% THD
1kHz = 0.2% THD
20kHz = 0.3% THD

(50W/4 ohms) 20Hz = 0.7% THD
1kHz = 0.6% THD
20kHz = 1.8% THD

(25W/4 ohms) 20Hz = 0.2% THD
1kHz = 0.2% THD
20kHz = 0.8% THD

5W/8 ohms) 20Hz = 0.2% THD
1kHz = 0.2% THD
20kHz = 0.3% THD
Signal to Noise Ratio better than -85dB at
rated output
Dimensions 460x160x330mm (WHD)
Warranty 24 months transferable on
parts and labour; 12
months on valves
Price #995 inc VAT

British Built Audiophile Products, 60 Curle Street, Glasgow G14
0RR. Tel 041-950 1191.