Kondo G-70 Preamplifier

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The Kondo G-70 is Kondo’s most affordable preamplifier yet. Now more music lovers can experience the Kondo quality. Launched in Dec 2010.

• High quality handcrafting with module style line amplifier section, best component placements, signal wiring and ground layout.
• 700uF huge reservoir by combining 3 types of capacitor in individual left and right channel. Delivering natural, stress-free music over the whole frequency band. 
• Tonal quality is enhanced with the newly developed DC heater circuit. It offers ultra-low impedance and supreme ripple rejection against voltage fluctuations. 
• Tremendous hours of listening and comparisons were spent for the selections of each resistor and capacitor.

 

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Specifications:

Frequency Response: 10 – 240kHz(+0dB -3dB, 100kΩLoad)
Total Harmonic Distortion: 0.07% (1kHz, 1V)
Input Impedance: 100kΩ
Output Impedance: 1kΩ (1kHz)
Noise: 0.11mv
Gain: 25dB
Min. Load Impedance: 20kΩ
Vacuum Tubes: 2 x 6072, 1 x 6X4
Power Consumption: 21w
Size: W333 x H160 x D438
Weight: 17.5 kg

Kondo Overture Integrated Amplifier

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The Kondo Overture is Kondo’s most affordable amplifier yet. ow more music lovers can experience the Kondo quality. Launched in Dec 2010.

• High quality handcrafting with module style amplifier section, best omponent placements, signal wiring and ground layout.
• Silver foil coupling capacitors are adopted in both driver and output stages. Decouplings are carefully placed along all stages for natural, stress-free music performance. 
• Newly developed CCB circuit guarantees signals purity. It stops signals from flowing through biasing trim pot. Tonal quality is drastically increased. 
• KONDO silver wires KSL-VzII and SSW are adopted. Tremendous hours of listening and comparisons were spent for the selections of parts.

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Specifications:

Max. Output Power: 32 watts
Frequency Response: 6 – 140kHz (+0dB -3dB, 1W)
Total Harmonic Distortion: 0.08% (1kHz, 1W)
Line Input: 1, 2, 3, 4
Input Impedance: 100kΩ
Noise: 0.5mv
Vacuum Tubes: 4 x EL34, 2 x 12BH7, 2 x 6072
Power Consumption: 180w
Size: W438 x H201 x D409 mm
Weight: 20.5 kg

Kondo Souga Power Amplifier

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• Silver wire wound output transformer
• Silver foil capacitors
• KONDO silver wires

Similar to the previous KSL-Neiro but comes with SILVER OUTPUT TRANSFORMERS. This 8 watt amplifier can be ordered (or changed internally) to 4 or 8 Ohms. The 4 Ohm tap is especially good for some harder loading speakers, such as those with impedances lower than 8 Ohm.

The driving power of the SOUGA is much improved over the KSL-Neiro.

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Specifications:

Max. Output Power: 8 watts per channel
Frequency Response: 8Hz ～ 35kHz (+0dB, -3dB)
Line: RCA 1
Input Impedance: 100kΩ
Vacuum Tubes: 4 x 2A3, 2 x 12BH7, 2 x 6072 / 12AY7
Power Consumption: 130w
Size: W430 x H233 x D314 mm
Weight: 34 kg

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Kondo Speaker Cables

Kondo Silver Speaker Cable

KSL-SPz

10 strands of 99.99% silver x 8 cores making a total of 80 strands pure silver per channel.

Kondo OFC Speaker Cable

KSL-SPc

This is the only oxygen free copper speaker cable in Kondo line, and this is also the only copper cable using KSL technology developed to remove the “sound roughiness” which aroused generally from the lower graded digital sound in the system like home theatre.

The heavily decoded signals from home theatre surround sound decoder and receivers usually comes with very unpleasant edginess and ear scratching sharpness, our KSL-SPc can greatly improved and transformed this into smooth and musical sound.

Kondo Interconnect

Kondo Silver Interconnect

KSL-LPz

36 strands 99.99% silver x 8 cores shield cable of 0.09mm diameter making a total of 288 strands of pure silver per channel.

KSL-Vz II

36 strand 99% silver x 4 cores shield cable of 0.09 mm diameter making a total of 144 strands pure silver per channel.

Kondo OFC Interconnect

KSL-Vc

4 cores of OFC copper shield cable in different diameters pre channel to achieve high low frequencies balance

Digital Cable

KSL-LPD

36 strand 99% silver x 8 cores shild cable of 0.09mm diametere making a total of 288 strands of pure silver.

KSL-VzD

36 strand 99.99% silver x 4 cores shield cable of 0.09 mm diameter making a total of 144 strands of pure silver.

Power Cord

KSL-ACz

10 strands of 0.2 mm diameter 99.99% silver x 8 cores making a total of 80 strands of pure silver terminated with grounded hospital graded “national” made AC power plug.

KSL-Acc

8 cores of OFC with KSL technology to enhance musicality & energy in sound

Cables & Interconnects

Silver Audio Wire – designed by Kondo

The silver cables of Kondo/Audio Note Japan which kept on leading the world’s criteria on “sound quality of cables” have at least reached the ideal quality level with smoother sound, least distortion and superiority in separation to minute signals.

All Kondo silver wire manufactured by Audio Note Japan is 99.99% pure silver coated with six coats of a special polyurethane varnish applied immediately after drawing. This prevents oxidation and provides mechanical surface damping of the proper ‘Q’. The wire is then age annealed to enhance the crystal boundary chemistry.

Remember that the music signal has an electro-chemical component. A/C current causes chemical changes in the wire alloy. Age annealed copper and silver wires have a purer and gentler sound than the hot or cold or chemically annealed wires. Kondo is the only audio manufacturer to use this expensive age annealing process to make their wire.

KSL-SFz MC TRANSFORMER KSL Silver Wire Wound

Silver Transformer

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If the core material sounds so much differently, then the material of coil would make the sound different, a simple logic. And I tried silver as a coil of transformer, first in the world. The sound with this transformer was just fabulous, far different from the former product, resulting in the sound so clean and so pure, arousing the addiction to listen. As the core material, I have asked one of the manufacturers to use sharp sound material. Some may say it is the world of maniac, but there are things that cannot be explained in the field of electricity. The reason is because sound is the world of mechanical vibrations. – Hiroyasu Kondo, Audio Note Co., Ltd., Tokyo – Dec., 1998 Kondo

MC transformers reveal a breathy air that charges the room – this is due to a larger quantity of small-scale information. In contrast, high gain phono stages tend to sound gray and tight…not the way Kondo thinks music should be reproduced not the way in which Audio Note products are made to sound.

The MC cartridge is essentially a low voltage/current generating device and the inductive-reactive, low DCR, MC transformer is the perfect load. The proportions of the music’s energy are much better preserved when a high-quality transformer is the load that the cartridge “sees”.

The transformer load is the gentle bridge that allows the most complete signal energy transfer. Another reason this “gentle bridge” is so effective at reproducing small scale information is that a properly designed transformer provides an impedance match that minimizes reflections from the load side of the cartridge/gain interface.

Voltage loss of a transformer is fundamentally ‘zero’! One of the most important aspects of MC transformer design is the selection of core materials. High permeability (i.e.: Superpermalloy/T-10) core materials are expensive and hard to make. Due to their extreme permeability, these exotic core materials make it very difficult to design quality transformers.

The designer must carefully balance wide bandwidth with a wide permeability ratio area. The shape or ‘aspect ratio’ of the core must be experimentally derived and the final results must be proven in listening tests under actual music conditions. Tests have shown that ‘E/I and L’ type cores generate local magnetic saturation due to their mechanical structure with joints.

The resonance or ‘beat’ of a core material must also be considered. Kondo has done much research on the resonant character of core materials and construction. When forming cores, permeability decreases by 50-60% if hard press stamping is used.

To regain permeability, hydrogen annealing must be used. Kondo uses more advanced forms of stamping, annealing, and finishing than any manufacturer in the world.

IO-M Cartridge

In order to draw IO-M’s best performance, the new preamplifiers have been implanted with enhanced technology which were taken in the latest amplifier engineering. Resultantly, drawing out of fresh sounds from analog discs, which could never been imagined in the past, has become possible.  So people in the world will be more excited with these new gears.

FEATURES

1. From the coil windings to the output pins, only a pure silver path is used. The coil windings are made from silver that has been age annealed for ten years to provide mellowness for total music enjoyment.
2. The magnetic circuit The IO-M uses a high performance AI-NiCo Magnet. The thick yoke is made from a soft iron with of very low carbon content. The iron is milled into the precise shape, rather than pressing in eider to prevent damage to the materials crystal structure.
   After milling the yoke is annealed to further assist in creating a smoothly controlled magnetic path.

Specifications:

Cartridge type: Moving Coil
Output Voltage: 0.12mV (1KHz, 5cm per second)
Channel balance: within 1dB at 1KHz
Channel separation: greater than 25dB at 1KHz
Source impedance: 1 Ohm
Compliance: 60 × 10^-6 cm/Dyne
Tracking pressure: 2.0±0.2g
Weight: 11g