Bargain-hunting and high-end performance may seem mutually
exclusive terms, but certain brands have always placed realistic
pricing high on the agenda. Most amusing is that the more
cost-conscious of all are the valve amp producers, who continue
to create some sensational bargains. In this country, we have
Croft, Audio Innovations and Concordant among others, while the
USA has Lazarus, Audible Illusions and Counterpoint to carry on
the Dynaco tradition.

With the exception of Counterpoint, all of the above are either
cottage industry or a cut above; Counterpoint, on the other hand,
has grown to big boy level. At least, that's the impression I get
just by virtue of the company's advertising budget. You don't
advertise with full colour pages in American magazines when your
company is tiny.

To accomplish growth when you happen to be making tube or
tube-hybrid products, you have to reach a larger part of the
market than that consisting of solder-heads who hang around hi-fi
shops and quote magazines chapter and verse. God bless 'em, but
there just aren't enough lunatic fringe audiophiles around to
support all of the specialist brands. So what does it take for
products as esoteric and ¬non¬-mass-market as valve gear to appeal
to a more casual buyer?

Two things have always characterized Counterpoint products. The
first is that the products look modern and expensive, enough not
to induce techno-fear into those who would eye a chassis bearing
exposed valves with something akin to suspicion. The second is
that Counterpoint has always offered affordable products,
whatever the company may have in the upper reaches of the
catalogue.

The flip-side, though, is that Counterpoint always wore its
compromises on its sleeve, and the price you paid for
smart-looking, good-sounding gear was more than the sensible
number on bottom of your receipt. The lower-priced Counterpoint
models, in my experience, were poorly constructed, noisy and
often unreliable. But the fine sound meant that you put up with
it. After all, the poor construction only affected your ego, the
noise could be ameliorated with severe tweaking and the
unreliability usually involved minor servicing, like the odd naff
tube sneaking through the QC program.

Now there's a new generation of small models to replace such gems
as the near-legendary SA-7 pre-amp, in my mind the closest thing
yet to a modern equivalent of Dynaco's PAS-3. The current
entry-level Counterpoint pre-amp is the SA-1000. It shows that
Counterpoint paid heed to the charges laid against the '7,
usually related to tube ringing and microphony so bad that you
could almost use it as a substitute for an old valve Neumann.

SA-1000 Pre-Amp

The SA-1000 starts out by NOT cramming everything into a small
chassis. Sleek though the '7 may have been, it couldn't have been
too comfortable for the tubes to be lying on their sides in a
shallow chassis. In the SA-1000 they stand upright, with plenty
of breathing space. It also allows for a less-cluttered fascia,
though I must admit that the slighty assymetrical hodge-podge and
undersized controls favoured by the company help neither the
aesthetics nor the ergonomics.

The SA-1000, from left to right, offers the essentials and
nothing more: a source selector choosing between one of two phono
settings and three line sources, a tape monitor switch, balance,
volume, mute and power on/off. No complaints here, as that's all
you need, though I wouldn't have minded a polarity inversion
switch on a product from a company which championed the facility.
The only unusual facility is the choice of phono settings, the
unit arriving in a high gain mode ideal for the majority of
moving coils.

To configure the SA-1000 for the low gain setting, for high
output cartridges, you simply remove a couple of internal shunts
which connect pins on the circuit board behind the input
selector. This activates the low gain setting while deactivating
the high gain option. Counterpoint feels that keeping both active
would degrade the sound, so the user makes a choice. One other
option is available to phono users who don't like 47k Ohm loading
for m-cs. Two sets of internally positioned sockets will accept
loading resistors should you wish to tailor the sound to best
suit an m-c unhappy with the factory setting.

At the back are high quality sockets which accept the various
source components, plus outputs for tape and 'main out' and an
earthing post for phono. Aside from the phono adjustments, the
only effort demanded of the SA-1000 beyond basic hook-up is the
installation of the three valves; removal of the lid for this
procedure presents the perfect opportunity for setting the phono
section, ideal if you don't want to keep removing the lid. The
valve complement consists of a pair of 12AX7s and a single 6DJ8,
clearly identified and easy to install.

Details which make the SA-1000 a more 'real world' proposition
than the SA-7 include the hybrid line stage which minimizes tube
ringing, the aforementioned 'big box' topology and a superior
selector switch which shorts out unused inputs to eliminate
crosstalk. A pleasant surprise for those moving from an SA-7 to
an SA-1000, in addition to owning a pre-amp which you can touch
without sending a thump or ringing through the speakers, is the
presence of an auto-muting circuit which eliminates the clicks
and pops that made you feel a 'Kellogg's' logo would have been a
more apt decoration for the fascia.

Circuit details, reflecting the hybrid nature of the design,
include solid-state regulation (good for extending tube life) and
a MOSFET in the line stage to buffer the main outputs from the
line valve. The SA-1000 uses triodes for all amplification
stages, with the pair of dual-triode 12AX7 in the phono circuit
and each half of the 6DJ8 providing line stage voltage gain for
each channel; a MOSFET supplies current gain. A capacitor
prevents DC from reaching the outputs. (Chorus of deep sighs of
relief...) The power supply consists of a high voltage winding
off the transformer for the main amplification stages, with a low
voltage winding to supply filament voltage, all fully rectified.

The net result is a pre-amp which, well, ¬behaves¬, something which
I found staggering considering the ornery nature of its
predecessor. It will drive long leads without difficulty, it runs
cool enough to survive with a gap of only two or so inches above
it and warm-up is remarkably quick, the unit reaching optimum
performance level in 15-20 minutes. So how about the SA-1000's
partnering power amp?

SA-100 Power Amp

Housed in the same 408x113x322mm (WHD) chassis as the SA-1000,
the SA-100 seems tiny for an amplifier delivering a very real
100W/channel into 8 Ohms. Then again, it is a hybrid, so we're
not looking at something which has to contain four or eight
6550s. Instead, it uses four 100W MOSFETS per channel for current
amplification, but 'tubies' still get their glow-in-the-dark
goodies.

The SA-100 employs four 6DJ8s for all voltage amplification and
driving the output stages. The output stages feature the MOSFETs
in a complementary-symmetry Class-AB configuration, with high
bias broadening the SA-100's Class-A range. As a result, the unit
runs warmer than its MOSFET heritage might suggest, but it's
still cooler running than either an all-tube design or a pure
Class-A device.

The output stage is not included in the feedback loop, and the
amp seems insensitive to nasty loads. Star earthing is utilized,
and an auto-muting circuit keeps this unit as thump-free as the
SA-1000; a two-colour LED, which switches from red to green after
one minute, indicates readiness. New to Counterpoint and featured
in the SA-100 is a copper-plated steel chassis to improve
shielding and to short-circuit eddy currents which might
otherwise find their way back into the audio circuits.

The LED and an on/off switch are all you find on the front panel,
while the rear contains phono sockets and proper binding posts
for the speaker wire. Installation is straightforward, with only
the fitting of the four valves to prevent straight-out-of-the-box
relief for those lacking patience. But, like the SA-1000, the
SA-100 reaches optimum performance in minutes rather than hours.

In Tandem

With a variety of CD players and analogue sources to hand, it was
easy to determine that the SA-1000 retained all of the SA-7's
virtues while eliminating its foibles. More telling would be to
find out how it mated with the SA-100 and to find if the SA-100
bettered the earlier SA-12. So, being poised to try the pairing
with a variety of speakers, I was able to run the Counterpoints
through the Celestion SL-700 Special Edition, the TDL 0.5, #20k's
worth of JBL Project K2 and AKG's K1000 headphones. And the first
thing I learned was that headbangers will not be disappointed.

Let's put it another way: if the SA-100 were made by Carver, it
would be rated at 2kW. After the debacle of the Silver Seven T,
I've grown leery of small solid state amplifiers with 'attitude',
and am suspicious even of hybrids. Yet however compact and
reasonably priced the SA-100, it behaved like a behemoth in the
Classe or small Krell league. But it lacked finesse when asked to
perform like something more musclebound, so it would be wrong to
portray it as packing too effective a punch.

When used to provide sensible levels, it complemented the SA-1000
so perfectly that I soon abandoned matching either piece with
other components. The Audio Research SP-14 revealed the SA-100s
limitations, while running the SA-1000 through the Aragons into
Divas showed that the Counterpoint pre-amp lacked some delicacy.
Oh, and the Aragons showed the slightly less-expensive SA-100
what the difference is between middleweight and heavyweight. But
sticking with all-Counterpoint electronics for the heart of a
system costing between #3500 and #4500 seemed somehow more
appropriate, because you can load the results to be whatever you
want them to be if you persist with mix'n'match.

Judged as a pair, the Counterpoints excel in detail retrieval and
soundstage presentation. This seems to be a Southern California
specialty, and it more than compensates for the lack of finesse
at high levels. Because Counterpoint has learned how to eliminate
background hash and grain, the new models are capable of far
cleaner, clearer low level sounds. This in turn means that
dynamic contrasts are more vivid, and nothing is lost under a
blanket of tube whoosh, ringing or microphony.

The Counterpoints sound a bit less lush that their predecessors,
but the presence of valves prevents a surfeit of transistoritis.
It's a boon for CD-based systems, with both the CAL Tempest and
the all-transistor Marantz CD-12 still sounding more like
analogue than they otherwise might.

So far, all is about par for the course, but I must say that even
I, a notorious mid-band fanatic who cares little about the
bottom-most octaves, found the sound a bit lightweight, and
nowhere was this more evident that with a pair of JBLs containing
no less that four 14in woof-woofs. And I was the not only
listener to note this on the bigger systems. As far as matching
is concerned, I'd rather hear the SA-100 driving TDL 0.5s or
Sonus Fabers or SL-700s. Truly wide-band speaker systems will
reveal the minor deficiencies at the bottom, while the smaller
systems will keep you blissfully unaware.

At the other end of the frequency spectrum, all is well, the
Counterpoints sounding sweet and tube-like, but with quick
transients and no smearing. But the undernourished bottom end
creates an impression of top-end prominence, so be careful not to
audition the Counterpoints with speakers 'on the edge'.

Somehow, Counterpoint has managed to replce the SA-7 with a
vastly better device for only #898. I say 'only', because the
price is far lower than an SA-7 would cost if one hadn't done
anything to it beyond adjust for inflation. The same goes for the
SA-100 power amp at #1425. Again, the price increase over the
SA-12 would barely cover the changes in the economy, so the
company should be congratulated for offering such notable gains
at such reasonable prices.

The only fly in the ointment has to do with the market rather
than the Counterpoint components ¬per se¬. They just happen to
occupy an upper-middle sector which is perilously close to the
lower reaches of the high end. With that in mind, I can say that
the Counterpoint package is something of a bargain if you're
looking to spend #2000-#2500 and the budget is fixed. But
scraping up another 20% will open up an entirely different set of
possibilities.