There are some things that it’s tempting to just keep to yourself. This is a story about one such audio product.

From about 1984 to 1999, I performed repairs on tube audio gear for various clients. There are some benefits to this beyond making a few bucks outside of your day job. One of the biggest is getting to hear equipment you otherwise wouldn’t (you have to test it out to make sure it won’t fail when you return it to the customer, after all). That’s how I first came to hear the Lectron JH-50.

It looked cool and sounded excellent, but was beyond my price range at the time. It was also not that common here in the US, being designed in France by one of the legends of the French audiophile community, Jean Hiraga. Mr. Hiraga was one of the seminal figures in the tube/triode/horn renaissance in Europe through his magazine l’Audiophile, so the amp had an excellent pedigree. I was determined to keep my eye out for one when finances allowed.

My next experience with the Lectron came at a friend’s audio store, years later. He had one of these in his personal collection and we were listening to it on a number of different speakers. We both decided that, somehow, this amp seemed to make whatever speaker we hooked up sound about as well as it could sound, it just had this uncanny ability to bring the best out of whatever it fed. My offer to buy it was rebuffed, but my determination to find one was re-energized.

Perhaps the magic of the JH-50 is in the (British) Partridge output transformers (that have always enjoyed a good sonic reputation). It employs EL-34 output tubes, always a pretty sweet sounding tube and that may help, as may the use of octal based drivers rather than the more common miniature tubes. Or maybe some synergy with the circuit design and the parts used. Whatever it is, it’s one of the best medium power (about 40 watt) tube amplifiers I have ever heard. Creamy without sounding fat, clear and beautiful, and in control.

Of course, like all tube amps, it is not completely “neutral” from a technical standpoint. But our speakers and our room are not perfectly neutral either, so how the sum of the parts of the Amp/Speaker/Room interface align is always up for question. This without questioning whether a “neutral” system is really desirable in the first place (he said provocatively).

So we fast forward to about 2004. I had finally found a JH-50 on Audiogon for a reasonable price and was waiting for it to arrive when an audiophile buddy of mine, who favors the tube/horn path, called late one afternoon. In our conversation, he lamented how hard it was for him to find an amplifier he was really happy with. In an unthinking moment, I mentioned the JH-50 and how it might be worthy of his attention. Now understand, my friend can be driven when it comes to his interests, so he went out a found a JH-50, liked what he heard, found another to have a spare and told all his friends who put on full court presses to find their own. Suddenly, the Lectron’s prices on the used market seemed to shoot up. Never content to leave well enough alone, folks started having their JH-50’s modified, which made $2000 amplifiers into $3000 amplifiers. Luckily, I already had mine.

So I am almost afraid to mention the JH-50. Not that I am so egotistical to think that just a mention on my blog is all that, but hey, it happened once before…