Brian Damkroger

When I reviewed VTL's MB-750 monoblock amplifier in the December 1997 Stereophile (Vol.20 No.12), it was a transitional time for the company. Luke Manley had recently taken it over, and he and his wife and partner, Bea Lam, were aggressively retooling. They introduced new business systems, including rigorous inventory and quality control; rebuilt VTL's dealer network around top-rank dealers; and systematically upgraded the products themselves to improve their consistency, reliability, manufacturability, and performance. VTL's goal, Luke explained to me at the time, was to build amplifiers that competed with the very best, and to "make the tubes invisible to the customer."

"The bottom line is that good stuff really is better, and unfortunately, it usually costs more," proclaimed my friend Charlie over lunch one day. Our conversation had drifted to our newest toys, and although Charlie isn't an audiophile, he's passionate about his hobbies and appreciates performance and quality. He'll talk animatedly about exotic mountain bikes or Leica cameras, for example, and he has a garage full of Snap-On hand tools. Last winter he conducted an exhaustive search before selecting a particular pair of Zeiss binoculars—and the price of one of his James Purdey or 1930s-vintage Charles Daly shotguns would stagger even a veteran audiophile.

Like the $29,000 Boulder 2008 phono preamplifier, the new Whest PhonoStage.20 with its MsU.20 power supply costs as much as a car. Fortunately for you, that car happens to be my first new Saab, which cost exactly $2737 back in 1972. The solid-state Whest costs $2595, so it's a few hundred dollars cheaper. But at only a tenth the cost, it comes closer to the Boulder 2008's performance than it has any right to. That it's good enough to be mentioned in the same paragraph should tell you something about how good I think it is. Nor did it come to me hyped by the manufacturer—it took me by surprise from the minute I first heard it. I began my listening right away, before reading anything about the circuit design.