Write down these numbers and put the paper in a safe place:
(0902) 865326 and (0902) 331324. Those are the numbers I have for
Eminent Audio, Croft's distributors, and they're the most
important numbers associated with Croft ownership. Thinking back
on the myriad Croft valve products I've used and abused, only one
malfunction has occurred and that was nothing more than the
intermittent failure of the on/off LED on the original Basic. So
the toughest challenge of Croft ownership is becoming a Croft
owner in the first place, hence the need to keep those digits
handy. And you may want to use them once you read about Croft's
latest bargains.

Concentrating on the #199 Micro II meant ignoring the dearer
stuff, in itself something of an irony because Croft's more
expensive products are hardly what you could call outrageously
priced. Picking models at random -- the Croft line is quite
extensive -- I chose to sample a middle-of-the-range power
amplifier and the top-end pre-amp, the latter to find out what
Glenn could produce if cost restraints weren't part of the
equation. But, as with every Croft model, we're looking at items
which are 'out of the ordinary', not just another #1000 amp or
#1500 pre-amp.

THE SERIES 3 STEREO POWER AMPLIFIER

The Series 3 power amplifier is a case in point. A scaled-down
version of the company's Series 2, it's an output-transformerless
design. That it sells for #1000 is remarkable enough; that it
drives some pretty hungry speakers with impedances down to 5 ohms
is astonishing. While direct coupling of the valves to the
loudspeakers means no transformer and the miles of cable which
can impair signal quality, the production of such beasts is
complex, costly and fraught with peril. As a result, past designs
have been huge, temperamental, delicate and scared spitless of
looking at speakers with impedances below 15 ohms. The Croft
Series 3 is endowed with real-world composure through the use of
paralleled low impedance/high current triodes in a push-pull
format; in the case of the Series 3, it's four pairs of rugged
and dependable PL519s.

As with all Croft products, the device is free of circuit boards,
all components being hard-wired with solid-core cabling. Designer
fetishists will note that Holco, Vishay or Wirewound resistors
are used throughout. Although spartan, the Series 3 is solid and
well-constructed, but its sheer homeliness will have many of you
hiding it out of the line of vision of aesthetes. It is, simply,
a box measuring 305x455x230mm (WDH), a chassis with a protective
cage perched on top. The weight, most of which is at the mains
transformer end, is a dainty 12kg. The front bears an on/off
toggle and access to four fuses, while the rear offers
gold-plated inputs, five-way speaker binding posts and the bias
adjustment points. No messing around here: you either learn to
use an a-v-o meter or buy your Croft from an intelligent
retailer. Painted in Model T Ford Black, the Series 3 looks like
what it is, a no-frills power amplifier. Just make certain that,
should you find its styling somewhat horrific, you find a hiding
place which offers plenty of ventilation.

Don't be fooled by the 50W/channel rating. This amplifier
embarrassed a host of dearer, more highly spec'd ¬solid-state¬
units and drove loudspeakers with impedances down to 5.6 ohms.
The other good news is that you can mono these for double the
output should you move onto a different loudspeaker without
wishing to part from a Series 3.

THE MEGA-MICRO PRE-AMPLIFIER

Thankfully, my only objections to Croft corporate policy are
aesthetic or semantic. I mean, 'Mega-Micro'? 'Micro II Special'?
'Super Micro'? 'Super Micro A'? I do wish GC would settle into
some naming groove so people knew what was what in his
ever-expanding range. Y'see, these names don't appear on the
front of the Croft pre-amps, because it's all part of the
cost-savings techniques which make Croft the best value kit in
the land: one fascia fits all. The Mega-Micro -- the #1500,
top-of-the-line, two-box pre-amp -- is housed in exactly the same
box as the bottom-of-the-line model, with only one visual
difference: the Micro II's on/off toggle has been replaced by a
small red tell-tale which glows briefly when you switch on from
the outboard power supply. Croft passes the savings in tooling on
to the consumer, hence the embarrassingly low prices. The power
supply is also housed in the same box, but it sports a different
face plate to account for having only two holes drilled into it,
for the on/off toggle and telltale LED.

Both boxes measure 390x230x80mm (WDH) and are finished in black
with gold legends. The lids are made of mesh (a stylistic link
with the amp?) and the overall look is industrial but smart and
purposeful. Gone are the days when Croft products looked like
end-of-line buy-outs from a 1962 Radio Shack catalogue. Like the
#199 Micro II, the Mega has two volume controls in keeping with
its dual-mono status, a mute toggle (the only 'common' control),
separate left/right source selectors and separate left/right
phono/line selectors. At the back, it's the same layout as the
Micro II but all of the phono sockets are top quality,
gold-plated affairs. Also fitted to the Mega is a multi-pin
socket to take the feed from the power supply.

One way of looking at the Mega is as an overkill version of the
basic Croft recipe. In addition to external niceties like gold
socketry and marginally nicer knobs, the Mega employs four
completely separate high tension power supplies, enabling each
stage in the Mega to have its own power source. The Mega also
features two completely separate heater supplies, one for each
channel. The output stage operates in push-pull mode for a lower
output impedance, greater overload capability, lower distortion
and overall sonic superiority. And, again in keeping with the
Croft formula, the units are entirely hard-wired and pcb-free.

THE SOUND OF #2.5K

Spoiled as I am by a steady stream of insanely priced products, I
have to admit that my biggest (hi-fi) thrill is finding something
which does the job for a smaller outlay. That's why I went ga-ga
over the Apogee Stages, Audio-Technica's AT-F3 and kin, the
Celestion 3 and other cost-effective triumphs. With Croft
products, I'm so used to being dazzled that I live in fear of
becoming blase about each new achievement. And because I prepared
for this review by doing time with that positively brilliant
Micro II, I feared that maybe, just maybe I was going to be
disappointed. It's never in a reviewer's interests to expect too
much even before the mains plug has been fitted.

Prior to playing with the Crofts in tandem, I used the Series 3
on its own, then the Mega Micro, before uniting them as a natural
pairing. Each in turn was inserted into my main system, but the
Apogees were set aside when using the Series 3 in favour of less
threatening speakers. And one of the first challenges to which
the Series 3 rose were the ATC SCM20s, hungry little devils which
make dearer amps quake. They'd been chewing up and spitting out
all manner of amplifiers, mainly because of their low sensitivity
rather than low impedance (they don't drop below 5.6 ohms). Other
amps were clipping on seeming innocuous peaks, there was audible
compression, strain, you name it, and this was at normal levels.

While the Series 3 wouldn't blow down doors or cause the earth to
move, it revealed no signs of distress at all with the kind of
demands I deem to be suitable for normal listeners. Here, my
friends, is a sensibly-priced OTL amplifier which will drive
something other than LS3/5As or Quad ESLs.

There's one indisputable reason why audiophiles put up with such
ornery, restrictive designs as OTLs, and that's the unrivalled
transparency afforded by eliminating the transformer. It's a gain
not unlike moving from a box-type enclosure to a good panel, or
from thin-strand cables to real ones, an opening-up of the sound
which inspires such analogies as 'cleaning the window' or
'lifting another veil'. Frankly, I don't give a hoot which
analogy you apply: OTL amplifiers, at least all of those which
I've tried, simply possess a level of openness and clarity only
rarely achieved by other topologies, and then in costly
amplifiers striving for the state of the art. Finding such
transparency at the #1000 price point is like finding prime filet
in your Big Mac.

The bass, I hasten to add, is one of the sacrifices you make for
this transparency. Not quite coincidentally, you'll also notice
that the two speakers which adore OTLs -- the LS3/5A and the
original Quad ESL -- aren't exactly troglodytes, if you catch my
drift. But when you find that rare OTL which does have the
ability to drive speakers which dip (convincingly) below 80 or
90Hz, you're greeted with a blast from the past: vintage tube
lower registers. I'm not in the mood to taste my Timberlands, so
I'm not going to bleat about the rather appealing nature of
slightly underdamped bass, especially when it's only people over
the age of 40 who can praise it because of nostalgia. I just want
you to look elsewhere if you think that the bottom octaves on a
rap CD are the yardstick for a musical foundation. But given that
you can put up with slight sogginess, you'll probably find that
the bass delivered by this particular OTL is marginally better
(ie tighter) than the bass recreated by a number of
transformer-coupled designs of similar specification.

Whatever you hear down below, the midband will seduce you with
the charm of such other middle-octave sirens as the wooden-bodied
Koetsus, the aforementioned Quads, ditto the LS3/5A, the Stax
Lambdas and other musical marvels. This is an amplifier for the
lover of vocals, especially delicate or overly textured vocals.
True, there's a world of difference between the sounds which
issue forth from Linda Ronstadt and Leon Redbone, whose only
common ground are their initials. But it takes detail and
delicacy to capture all of the nuances of a voice like Redbone's
(or deVille's, or Cocker's, or Nat 'King' Cole's), while a voice
from some distaff angel needs clarity and freedom from sibilance.

The Series 3 also has a way with unamplified instruments, and
those Vanguard reissues made by hoary old folkies come alive with
a vibrancy I hadn't experienced since my first hit of expresso in
the Gate Cafe. The delicious harmonics of an acoustic guitar, the
mellowness of clarinet courtesy of Blue Note -- we're talking 'in
the room'. But this amplifier is as schizophrenic as need be, and
I fed it the antithesis of the above, massive doses of Thunder
and the Black Crowes and Gary Moore, without causing its undoing.

But there's a lesson to be learned, one which likens the Series 3
to other OTLs. Despite its way with speakers of low-ish
impedances, the Series 3 needs to be coddled if it's to reproduce
the scale and dynamics of Works Which Go Loud. The hard rock
taxed the Series 3 when it was hooked up to the ATCs; not so when
the Croft was connected to the Monitor Audio Studio 10s, the
Celestion 3s or even the Sonus Fabers.

One other area of the Series 3's brief deserves mention and
that's the sound stage it recreates. I've heard wider, deeper and
taller, but few amps at or near its price point can match it for
overall coherence and consistency. By that I mean a convincing
soundstage, with no 'blank spaces' or grave anomalies to ruin the
illusion. In many respects, it reminded me of the spatial
properties of the Solen Tiger: small, but perfectly formed.

The Mega Micro is in many ways too good for the Series 3,
suggesting that the latter will work adequately with one of
Croft's lesser pre-amps, or that the Mega deserves one of Croft's
dearer power amps. The Mega'ss dynamic capabilities were better
revealed through monster amplfiers like the 200W/channel Aragons
or the Carver Silver Sevens, feeding full-range panels like the
Divas. It's just that a number of the Mega's virtues are
compromised slightly by the Series 3.

Don't get me wrong: driving the Series 3 amplifier with the Micro
II and then swapping for the Mega wasn't unrewarding. You'd still
hear the differences between those pre-amps with no greater
difficulty than if you tried both through the Silver Sevens. But
the Mega is quieter as well as more dynamic than the Series 3,
and you become aware of this if, like me, you happen to try the
Mega Micro through an amplifier capable of greater dynamic
contrasts. It may be wholly psychological, but I was actually
more at ease when using the Micro II rather than the Mega to
drive the Series 3.

The Mega, you see, is of a whole calibre above the Series 3,
however wonderful that amplifier may be given its few and
entirely workable limitations. While the Croft Mega Micro proved
not to be a complete substitute for my reference, the much
costlier Audio Research SP-14, it performed more than adequate as
a drop-in replacement. Aside from lower gain in the phono
section, purely a practical consideration, the Mega matched the
SP-14 in transparency, dynamic contrasts amd coherence. Where the
SP-14 showed its superiority was in the resolution of fine
detail, transient recovery and the portrayal of ambience.

But that's treating the Croft Mega Micro as if it were some
mortgage buster from across the sea. It isn't. It's a native
product worthy of partnering any components you care to name. The
Series 3, while not the ideal match for the Mega, is to its price
class what the Micro II is to affordable pre-amps. Or, to repeat
myself with the tedium of a skipping LP, Glenn has done it again.

Croft has products which can take on the world, sonically if not
aesthetically. They've proven to be reliable beyond my wildest
dreams, they're built with care and they're embarrassingly
underpriced given the status quo. But the world has to know about
such items and be able to buy them if they're to reach those who
would appreciate them. If only Eminent Audio would get a separate
phone line for the FAX machine...