[Audio Empire]

We all assume that today's new equipment is so much better than yesterday's.
New materials, improved technology, better components; all conspire to give
us levels of performance unheard of a generation ago. Certainly that's true
with speakers, today's CD players certainly outperform those of the mid
'80's, Today's phono cartridges are better than those of vinyl's heyday, as
are arms, and to a certain extent, turntables. But what about electronics? Of
course they're better, they just have to be. Better circuits, better
capacitors, better resistors, modern output devices etc. Well, I had that
smug conviction badly shaken recently.

An audiophile buddy of mine called to say that he had a couple of "new"
acquisitions that he wanted my opinion of. When he showed-up, I was somewhat
amused. His "new" equipment consisted of a pair of MONO Eico HF-20 integrated
amplifiers from the 1950s. My friend had recently bought these from disparate
sources. He had run across one of them about a year ago at a garage sale and
was so impressed with it that he bought it and then started looking for a
mate (for stereo). Well, he recently found the mate to the unit and so
equipped he started their "resurrection". The hardest part was replacing the
multi-section electrolytic capacitor in the power supply (these are no longer
available), which he did with modern tubular capacitors from Rubicon mounted
under the chassis (where there was plenty of room). He then cleaned the
controls, replaced the tubes, and fired them up. They both sounded fine, It
was then that he called me.

Now, my main speakers are a pair of Martin-Logan Vista electrostatic hybrids.
I was skeptical that a pair of 20-Watt amps could drive the M-Ls , but was
willing to try. After making two-pairs of spade-lug-to-banana-jack adapters
(the old Eicos had those phenolic strip screw terminal speaker connections on
the back which won't accommodate today's spade-lugs (screws are too close to
one another), much less a pair of banana plugs), we fired the amps up after
connecting them to my Sony XA777-ES SACD/CD player.

The first thing that I noticed was that while my guess was that the amp
wouldn't be able to elicit more than a peep from the M-Ls, I was quite wrong.
I got normal listening levels with the volume control only cracked to about
the 10 o'clock position (all the way closed is about 8 o'clock). That was
startling enough, but what came next was even more startling. The amps
sounded every bit as good as any modern amp. Now, I didn't do any DBTs
against my reference amp or any such thing as that, I just listened. The
little Eicos had solid, tight bass (often a failing of older tube amps) but
these had huge output transformers for their power - easily as big as the
Acrosound untra-linear transformers that rival Dynaco used in their MK II
monoblock amps (50 Watts/channel), and I attrubute their decent bass to
those! Mids were clear and clean with good presence on vocals. Highs were
clean, articulate, and didn't sound particularly rolled-off. This really
surprised me as the impedance of the M-Ls drops to under 2 Ohms at 20 Khz.

The only place I noticed any distress at all was on loud crescendos or when I
pushed the amp to high average levels of volume with the control well past
the noon position. At that point things started to get a little thick
sounding. I get the general idea that with more efficient loudspeakers, these
little amps would equate themselves very handsomely at all volume levels with
any kind of music. I could happily live with them as my main system if
coupled to a decent pair of high-efficiency speakers. My friend plays them
through a pair of recently acquired Warfedale W60Ds with a vintage Thorens
TD-150 turntable/arm and a Sumiko Blue-Point Special cartridge. I'll bet the
combo sounds marvelous. I almost envy him.