Hi, Stu
I think many will be delighted to read your review. Thanks!
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Wow, that is a rave review if I’ve ever seen one. Makes me seriously think about selling my Pas XA60.5 and get a pair of much more efficient M1200’s…
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Thanks Stu, this is awesome!
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You wouldn’t regret it. Not for a moment. 
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Great review Stu! I’m glad you mentioned the Gold Lion tubes! I was going to try a set out for myself. I already changed to the Brimar NOS tubes which sound great but I’d like to hear what the others tubes can do for my set up.
You bet. Thanks for posting it.
High praise, indeed!
Really enjoyed your prose…and I get the impression you enjoyed the amplifiers…
Do you happen to have any opinion regarding whether, in general terms, these amps would pair better with an excellent SS or tube preamplifier?
TIA.
Paul, it was a real treat for me to review the M1200. Writing reviews is not always an easy or pleasant task for me, particularly when I’m kind of ho-hum about the gear. As you can probably tell, this one really got the 'ole juices flowing and practically wrote itself, for the simple reason that I freaking love the amplifier! It’s easy to write this stuff when you passionately believe every word of it.
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Scott,
I paired the M1200s with the Hattor Audio Big passive pre that had the add on gain stage using a Dexa opamp and an outboard power supply. This thing is utterly transparent and beat out four other pre’s I had. So, I obviously went SS. I would go with a great tube Pre if I felt that my system was a little dry, analytical, and lacking the 3D image qualities. Since the M1200 itself does not lack any of these areas and the rest of my associated gear apparently doesn’t either, I was quite satisfied to stick with the ultimate in transparency. In fact, I often switched to full passive mode for critical listening. The M1200 is easy to drive and sounds good with the pre in passive mode too. That is not always the case with amps and part of the reason I chose the very flexible Hattor for my long term review system.
Thanks for the, I believe, excellent insight.
I am going to look up your preamp.
Cheers.
Ha! “Big” is the name of the model!
Tube preamps, done right, can be very neutral and reasonably transparent too. As a review person, I want maximum flexibility, so that my pre will work well with any front-end or back-end changes to the system I might make. That’s why the Hattor is my swiss army knife pre. I have rca and xlr inputs and outputs, completely passive or active operation, and stepped attenuators using the finest resistors you can buy. All of this with a remote control that switches everything. I’m confident that I was hearing only the M1200 with little to no editorializing by the pre.
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And all at an incredibly low price, even with optimal configurations, as far as I can tell…
Hi Stu. What Herbies damper model are you using on the tubes? The SS or RX? Thank you
Paul, I used the RX. Tube damping is another one of those rabbit holes. Too little and you won’t hear any improvement, too much and it will suck the life out of your tunes. In this application, I found the RX to be just right.
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Adjusting how tightly it clamps the glass is important too. I have it just touching enough that it can’t slide down the tube.
Arek’s Hattor pre is the only pre-amp I ever owned. Also the only component I ever owned where the paint fell off just by touching it. It was totally transparent as far as I recall. It had power only for the 1970’s style display (see below), that was it, otherwise totally passive. You can see the missing paint.
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Haha…you played it so hard, you knocked the paint off of it! I just built a custom power supply for my Dexa opamp-equipped version and it kicked the active side’s sound quality up a very large notch. I even had Steve Huang at Audio Sensibility build me a custom power pig-tail. My version has +15v and -15v for the opamp and +5v to handle all the remote switching.
Thanks!