Dared MP5; HCT; Fatman amps

heiney9

Just as a heads up to those interested in one of these hybrid tube integrated amps.

HCT; iTube Fatman; Dared MP5; Sonic Integrity MP5; Vuum Vti-B1 are all the same amp and a seller on audiogon has 25 of these units with iPod dock, remote and speakers for a very good price.

http://www.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?intatube&1246145676&/Dared-MP5-Sonic-Integrity-tube

I was so impressed with this little amp with my 5B's I bought a 2nd NIB unit off ebay about 2 weeks ago to have as a back-up.

This is a really good deal as the same unit from Amazon is selling for $420 and the iTube Fatman is selling at Audio Advisor for $399.

I have no affiliation with the seller on Audiogon...........I had a few PM's about the HCT when I snagged it from the FM and others were interested. These are somewhat hard to find and a very good deal for a stellar sounding tube hybrid amp.

H9

P.s. I've done a lot of research and these are all the same units with different branding. The Sonic Integrity is exactly the same thing as the Fatman which is the same thing as the HCT HMS-100.....etc. Dared sold the rights to produce this little wonder-amp and it was marketed by these 4 companies and probably more.

ben62670

I had one, and it was great. Speakers kinda lame. I can't even spell Ipod, but the amp alone is very fun.

heiney9

It really is a nice little amp for an office or bedroom or smallish main room. I bought the 2nd one for the amp too. I don't use the speakers, although for what they are they aren't too bad. I don't own an iPod either.

I have been listening to this amp with my 5B's in my office/computer rig non-stop since I got it. I rolled some NOS '70s' Siemens tubes into her and on vocal, jazz and acoustic it sounds unbelievable. The sound stage is HUGE. The stock Chinese tubes are pretty bad. I have a pair of 70's NOS R-F-T German made tubes on the way and the Russian 6N1P tubes that came with the one I bought here in the FM are a really nice sounding tubes, with great bass.

All in all this is a sleeper amp and it's built like brick sh*thouse. It isn't junk!!!

# high-quality E-core power transformer
# 24K pure gold PCB. Dared had tried silver and copper PCBs and point-to-point wiring. The pure 24K gold PCB performs best.
# NOS key resistors by Allen Bradley (US made)
# Japanese Rubycon coupling capacitors
# Japanese Nippon/Nichicon filter and bypass capacitors
# Taiwanese HT audiophile volume pot and pure 100% shielded silver wires from the inputs to the volume pot with lead-free copper/silver solder
# Japanese Fuji diodes
# rear-mounted gold-plated analog inputs
# front-mounted headphone output
# ceramic gold-contact tube sockets
# 15wpc direct-coupled IC speakers outputs without output coupling capacitor and extremely flat frequency response with THD < 0.2 at full power
# ShuGuang cat's eye tube meter for power output
# soft start with 30 second relay protection
# chromed steel chassis, wooden piano gloss cheeks and decorative tube rail
# solid 5-way binding posts

Put a nice source w/quality cables and this wunder-amp is killer!!!!!

I love it!

ben62670

Dude try it as a pre using the headphone out with an adapter to RCA's;) I am going to mod one soon to have pre outs via tube stage:)

heiney9

ben62670 wrote: »

Dude try it as a pre using the headphone out with an adapter to RCA's;) I am going to mod one soon to have pre outs via tube stage:)

I already have been looking at the data sheet for the gainclone chip they use. It mentions bridging the output. Then I could run them as Mono's :cool:.

I also found a DIY on putting a jumper to make one of the RCA inputs into an output for the exact reason to use it as a pre-amp.

I'll experiment this weekend with the headphone out. I still have my Adcom 545 here to use as an amp.

ben62670

You're a freak. Send the 750 to
Ben ..........
.... .................... ...... ..
......., GA .....
Thanks
Ben

jcaut

I've been thinking of trying to get a pre-out off the tube stage, but I haven't had much time to devote to it. If anyone has any plans along those lines, I'd be interested in hearing about them.

Jason

ben62670

I will take pics;)

heiney9

Here's a link I found.

http://gainphile.blogspot.com/2007/11/dared-mp-5-impression-and-modification.html

Data sheet for the output chip

http://www.datasheetcatalog.org/datasheet/stmicroelectronics/1478.pdf

Ben, you're not getting my 750