Tube Amplifier Nirvana by Jadis of France, up close and inside - Brooks Berdan Ltd. 

Hi Frank, Jadis Orchestra Reference is available with KT120 / KT88 Genalex / KT88 EH / 6CA7 / EL34 tubes. Which will give me the most beautiful sound overall ?

You've got that right !

Thank you Wendell.

I agree with you about the bias pots. It's not minimalism, it's cheapness and/or lack of attention to detail. You gotta disconnect EVERYTHING, flip this gold-plated 75-100lb. brick over, remove the dozen or so bottom screws, put that big sheet of stainless steel off to the side somewhere, figure out & then find something safe to elevate the chassis somewhat in order not to CRUSH the KT-120's (which absolutely DWARF KT-88's, despite the KT-88 being the next largest Pentode output valve around!), making sure that not only that what you rest the amp on gives it at least a few inches of clearance but that it also won't leave any marks on that beautiful mirror-finish chassis nor the golden plates or black paint on the top of the transformer covers, THEN maybe you can dick around inside trying to find & adjust some shitty little trim pot (not an ALPS cermet pot for bias!) & SAFELY hook up the 2 leads of your voltmeter whilst trying to avoid getting a 500VDC shock & burn or otherwise short something out in the Borg Hive w/o setting either your hair or your house on fire!🤪 And THE BEST valve amps have a separate bias pot for each output valve. Bet this piece of BRILLIANT! French 🗣️🗣️"Engineering" doesn't! And that it's entirely likely that they just have a single pot to simultaneously adjust all 4 valves?🤔🙄 AND I bet that it's a special Jadis secret what the bias setting should be, & that even you guys aren't told what it should be either, unless you call J.C. Calmettes(?) at the factory in beautiful Ville Jubert(?), France?🤫 So you probably can't match the output valves optimally to each other & are stuck paying extra all the time for matched pairs or matched QUAD's, which will then drift away from each other over the next 50-200hrs. (just as they finish "breaking in"🙄) and there's nothing you can do about it! So if you get far enough to get the bottom removed to expose the elegant Rat's Nest, you can "enjoy" all the unnecessarily wasted time & torture huffing & herniating to get it all hooked back up again!🥳 And despite all the pretty buss bars, I'll bet dollars to doughnuts that the earthing is anything but star-wired; i.e., full of ground loops of various kinds...🤨 I also dug all the cheap 💩 coupling capacitors & $1 Chinese ceramic sockets ($1.50 if they're gold-flashed🤗). At least the BC Components 1W metal film resistors & low value electrolytic filter caps are "OK". Good enough to be found in a Rogue Cronus Magnum, then!🕺 But as an Audio Tech myself, I totally disagree that point-to-point wiring makes something less easy to work on than some overstuffed & often flimsy PCB (Hello c-j!🤮). Especially the way the IDIOTS at VTL do it, where the output valve sockets are soldered directly to ONE single, solitary PCB. Like the Prima Luna ads explain, a blown output valve often results in a scorched board, rendering the amp an instant write-off. And in a VTL (I recently had to work on an IT-85, which is a PERFECT example of how NOT to build an expensive Valve amplifier), you have NO access to the top of the PCB & therefore ALSO cannot trace & follow the circuit paths, unless you unsolder EVERY single of the 20-30 wires soldered to it! Which then means that you've had to remove it from the amp ENTIRELY, thus having NO way to operate it & therefore, troubleshoot it "live"!!!😳😱😱😱🤬🤬🤬🤯🤪🤤🤤🤤😈 Here's looking at YEW, Luke & Bea Manley!👹👹😡 And I will say this: ANY Jadis just sonically clobbers the likes of most other Valve amp brands. No sterile whitish grainy bleached-out & fatiguing transistory AUDIO DEATH noise that Audio Research can't help but make. Nor the mucky, flatulent & slightly opaque & murky Prima Luna "pseudo-Vintage" BO-RING! sound, either. Given that $15k is actually "reasonable" by today's standards of otherwise seriously unhinged & phishy HIND-END FRAUDIO fantasy prices for a 30-75W/ch valve amp, I still have to recommend Jadis to people even as I try not to choke on my rising bile. Oh well...😮‍💨

@@joerosen5464 That's one hell of a reply! Very entertaining. Wishing you the best.

Thank you for your comment. We would recommend a pair of speakers that have a minimum of 87db efficient, with a more efficient being able to better take advantage of the power that this amplifier develops. This is a really fine amplifier and with an excellent pair of speakers will make a spectacular combination. We have had great success pairing it with a pair of Spendor D7 and Spendor D9 as well as a pair of Revel f228be. All of these combinations were really amazing. These speakers all have an efficiency of 90db.

Without knowing the size of your room, the kinds of music you prefer & the volume levels you want to achieve, that's an ambiguous question. But the amp should work well with everything save Magico, Magnepan & MBL...If you prefer analog sources, this amp will be a particularly excellent match with a full-range Electrostatic like a QUAD or Martin-Logan CLX's...

Not his daily listen, just used for testing.

You should do yourself the favour, especially if you're sensitive to listening fatigue & want to hear more low-level detail than Rogue or Prima Luna are capable of.

Yeah! I heard it too! I didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings & mention it myself; but now that you brought it up... I think the 90yr. old technician might suffer from "Restless Leg Syndrome". If you didn't already know, there is such a thing. The joys of aging...🤮

These amplifiers take hours and hours to make. They are hand made with point to point wiring and much attention to details.

Welcome to Hind-End Fraudio. Where EVERYTHING is expensive! This amp is almost entirely hand-made, & in low production volumes that can't take advantage of efficiencies of scale. And it's built in a high labour cost Western European country called "France"; where people get free higher education, health care, and social security pension at 62yrs. old. IOW, Jadis products are made in a CIVILISED country; unlike America or China. It takes ALOT longer to build something "point-to-point" wired, & you need ACTUAL skilled labour that requires alot more training than an illegal 👽 stuffing PCB's in Corpus Christi or Chino. If you invest in training quality workers, it's stupid not to pay them accordingly or else they won't stay! Most audio companies farm out their transformer orders to some Transformer company that doesn't specialise in Audio types. Jadis therefore is maso enough to design & build their own, FROM SCRATCH. Including ALL the machines & jigs! The chassis is made entirely of heavy (≈12ga) guage STAINLESS STEEL, a much more difficult material to work with than painted steel or anodised aluminium. Also note in the video that the stainless steel was WELDED together at each corner, which then had to be HAND ground & polished to perfection. Then they encase all their transformers in individual shielded painted steel cases filled with "potting compound" which is either epoxy resin or a special heavy tar-like compound. Both of which require time-consuming extra steps to complete, as opposed to screwing a painted steel cover(s) on each end of the transformer & calling it a day, like virtually EVERY other audio company does. Then there's the thick gold-plated ENGRAVED front panel AND transformer plates, & what are likely custom-made gold-plated knobs (brass? Stainless? High-Grade Nickel?😳). Then add the Trans-Atlantic shipping & US Distributor's markup, two things a North American product avoids!🤑 Every BOZO "Audiophoole" just pretends that "the sound" is what matters most to them, & that their buying decisions are based PRIMARILY on that.🧐 This is complete & utter 🐂💩!🤣🤣🤣 They buy PRIMARILY on appearance; followed by snob/showoff appeal, then whether OTHER PEOPLE told the PUTZ that it's a great product (usually if he sees a good review by some paid industry SHILL that he knows absolutely NOTHING about, except that they wrote for such & such a glossy magazine or such & such a Ninnynet on-line FRAUDio magazine Google directed his lazy stupid ass to!🤪🤤🤤🤤), AND maybe even the perceived resale value of the thing (or its corellary: "Yeah...but I got a DEAL on it!"👹🙄🥱)! THEN, MAYBE, what it sounds like might concern them...a little bit anyways.🥱 So if you were Jadis, why on earth would you make it look any less flashy?😑

@@joerosen5464 Civilized?Thats's why French people are so racicst!

I've never seen that in my 35 years of seeing & working on Jadis! Maybe you need to wash your grubby hands a little more often?🤔 Also, there's this stuff called "polish". Ever heard of it? Maybe it has to be used once in a while.🧐 But I don't think so. There's a clear lacquer coating sealing the metal, only an orangutan could wear it off!🙄

But doesn't sound natural.

Ian john Horwood - Your Avi wipes the floor with any tube amp regardless of its quality and build? That’s like mentioning a McRib sandwich while people are discussing the great BBQ pits of the South. What tube amps have you heard? Jadis 800? Conrad Johnson Premier 8’s? VAC 452? Great sound isn’t just about being “clean clear fast and dynamic and exciting and harmonic” however even the better solid state power amps & preamps from Krell, Levinson, etc would most likely embarrass a Avi integrated amp in those respects along with others such as soundstaging, imaging, timbre of instruments, etc

McRib!!!! lol Touché!!!!!!!!

you had to add your ignorant, combative point of view. you're just a major know it all. the Einstein of audio w your biamped 90s relics.

Everything sounds "THE BEST" when it's something we own, isn't it?🤗🤗🤗 🤨🙄