Conrad Johnson will always hold a special place in my heart. The look, the build quality, the use of only the best components, and most of all that sound that you get from CJ is special. I finally just let go of my first CJ components, a PV 10 preamp, and an MV 55 amp after over 20 years. I had not used them in years because I moved on to a PV 12 and Premiere 11 mono blocks some time ago. Still, I had a hard time letting go. They are all works of art, inside and out in my opinion.
Here we have an MV 60 power amp, which took the place of the MV 55. The EL34 Sovtek tubes have low hours on them. We installed new Sovtek 6SN7's and new Sovtek 12AX7LPS's. The amp was detailed and gone through on our bench and it is up to spec. We ran the amp for a week in one of our systems and it sounds fantastic.
Physically the amp is in very good condition. There are two marks on the top left front of the unit both of which I tried to point out in the pictures. They are not very noticeable when on our rack and they don't stand out. The rest of the body shows no noticeable wear.
The unit will ship in it's original box with owners manual, Allen key, spare fuse, and bias adjustment tool.
From Conrad Johnson
MV60 VACUUM-TUBE POWER AMPLIFIER
— introduced April, 2000
MV60 Vacuum-Tube Power Amplifier
For nearly thirty years, conrad-johnson has helped define the concept of high end audio through its relentless pursuit of excellence, its use of only the finest available component parts, and its single-minded dedication to building the best high-fidelity products available. Less frequently acknowledged, however, is conrad-johnson’s dedication to the “forgotten” audiophile – the dedicated music-lover who requires musically satisfying performance but whose budget does not aspire to the loftiest of current offerings. For as long as the company has been producing its world-renowned Premier series of audio instruments, it has also been adapting the technologies and construction techniques responsible for those products and applying them to a more affordable, but equally discriminating, line of components.
The MV60 is the latest link in that chain and it personifies the same compulsive attention to even the smallest detail that differentiate the true audio originals from less serious designs. The MV60 is a 55 watt per channel stereo vacuum-tube power amplifier that achieves its true-to-life sound through a combination of canny engineering and daring innovation.
Consistent with conrad-johnson’s design philosophy that circuits should be kept as simple as possible, the MV60 works its magic with just eight vacuum tubes.
A composite triode input stage is direct coupled to a cathode-coupled phase inverter. The two sections of the phase inverter drive the output stage, which is comprised of a pair of EL34s operated in an ultra-linear configuration, producing 55 watts per channel. Limited negative feedback is applied to the circuit to reduce distortion and provide a sufficiently high damping factor to control most real-world speaker systems. Discrete dc power supply regulators are provided for the input and inverter stages, in order to isolate each stage from the output signal.
Variations on this simple circuit have provided the blueprint for many superb sounding CJ products in the past.
This latest iteration benefits from recent advances achieved in our Premier range of products. Conrad-Johnson’s continuing research into transformer design has uncovered an intricate variation on transformer construction that results in unusually wide bandwidth output transformers. These ultra wide-band Trans-spectral transformers are used in all of the current Premier power amplifiers. The MV60 is the first time these costly transformers have been used outside the Premier range. The MV60 also benefits from recent advances in power supply design developed for conrad-johnson’s flagship products.
conrad-johnson products are internationally known for setting the standard of parts quality for the industry, and the MV60 proudly upholds that tradition.
Premium-quality parts are used throughout. All circuit capacitors, including the main power supply filter and storage capacitors, are polypropylene – there are no electrolytic capacitors in the audio circuit or in the related power supplies. All audio circuit resistors are special high-precision, low-noise metal film types. The obsession for parts quality extends to the precision machined, gold plated input jacks and output connectors ‹ even the internal wiring was chosen on the basis of its sound quality in its specific application. The MV60 was subjected to exhaustive batteries of instrumental and listening tests before its design was finalized.
The result of all this painstaking attention to detail is an amplifier that is both refined and surprisingly powerful.
Although it is conservatively rated at 55 watts per channel, it offers sufficient power to drive all but the most difficult speaker systems reliably for thousands of hours of listening pleasure without requiring complex user-adjustments. Users who have not previously experienced the dynamic range and lifelike timbre of tubed components will find the MV60 an ideal introduction to the joys of modern tubed products. Along with its tonal integrity, its ease of use, low maintenance costs, and reliability will be a revelation for those who have only experienced “entry-level” tubed gear. For veteran audiophiles, its modest price and size make it the perfect “second system” amplifier, bringing conrad-johnson quality and reliability to a different room from the state of the art primary system. A word of warning if you are in this last group: whether in the den, library, or bedroom, the MV60’s wide bandwidth and low distortion will give your main system a run for the money.
Specifications:
- Power (ultralinear operation): 55 watts per channel from 30 Hz to 15 kHz at no more than 1% THD, both channels driven into 4, 8, or 16 Ohms (when re-connected for the chosen load impedance)
- Power (triode operation): 25 watts per channel from 30 Hz to 15 kHz at no more than 1.5% THD, both channels driven into 4, 8, or 16 ohms. (when re-connected for the chosen load impedance)
- Sensitivity: .8 volts rms to rated power (ultra-linear)
- Gain: 26 dB
- Freqency Response: 20 Hz to 20 KHz +0/-.5 dB
- Hum and Noise: 95 dB below 55 watts
- Input Impedance: 100 Kohms
- Phase: phase correct
Mechanical:
- Dimensions: 17.625W | 7H | 13.25D inches
- Weight: 48 lbs.