CES 2009

Mystère

Jason Victor Serinus  |  Jan 13, 2009

Directly across the hall from the PrimaLuna exhibit, I discovered its somewhat more expensive big brother line, Mystère. While PrimaLuna amps operate in triode mode, Mystère gives you the sound of tetrode. These aren't high power babies—the ia11 integrated amp ($1995) puts out 40Wpc watts and the ia21 integrated amp ($2995) gives you 50Wpc. The electronics are manufactured with a different partner in China, and are the dream project of their designer.

On a modest demo system, I heard the Mystère PA21 power amplifier equipped with KT88s, Concept CA11 preamp, PrimaLuna ProLogue Eight CD player, an ExactPower, and a Vienna Acoustics Beethoven Baby Grand produce some truly lovely sounds. If I ever end up with higher-sensitivity speakers, I'd love to give one of these babies a try.

COMMENTS
Jerry's picture
Submitted by Jerry (not verified) on January 13, 2009 - 4:42pm

Again, Can you spell “TRADE DEFACIT”? I hope that they outsource all of your jobs to China.

John Atkinson's picture
Submitted by John Atkinson (not verified) on January 14, 2009 - 8:50am

Indeed I _can_ spell "Trade Deficit," Jerry. :-)

MikeDC's picture
Submitted by MikeDC (not verified) on August 3, 2009 - 8:40pm

Jason, is your comment regarding "higher sensitivity speakers" because you believe the pa21's power to be too low to driver speakers of lower sensitivity. I have Spendor sp 1/2's (at 88db) which I had hoped to pair with this amp.

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