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(Continued from previous page)
Aaah, bliss! It all came flooding back, given that I barely made the Dreadnaught work for its keep, while even the Intrepid found the Martin Logans a doddle to drive. So let's deal with power first: you'd need to own some seriously hungry speakers to find the limits of the Intrepid. No amount of Hollywood block-bustering could make the amp clip, and never did I trigger the thermal overload, not with the newly-remastered DTS versions of the Die Hard movies, not Armageddon, not even the cannons in the exquisite Last of the Mohicans. But the Intrepid boasted something which was first apparent with movies, then with music.

True, I didn't have the amps side by side, but I swear that the Intrepid seemed sweeter in the midband than the Dreadnaught, and that centre-channel dialogue seemed warmer and even less susceptible to artifacts such as rasp, sibilance or chestiness. Fed five channels-worth of DVD-A, including Chesky's superb Christy Baron disc and Steely Dan's Two Against Nature, I found myself wondering if maybe, just maybe, DVD-A might not suck after all. (Please, let's not get onto the subject of butchering archive material here.)

With straight stereo CDs, the Intrepid handled the Persuasions' versions of Grateful Dead tunes with both subtlety and finesse, making you forget that this is a behemoth, not a plum 60W tube treasure. The soundstage is massive and well-defined, images are placed with utter precision and the sound has exactly the control and conviction which made me love its predecessor.

My verdict? Let's just say that I'm buying an Intrepid. In silver. And I won't miss having a Dreadnaught at all. Unless I find three more Scintillas...
 

Technology

As with the bigger amp, the Intrepid employs fully-balanced differential circuits and employs no global negative feedback. The input stage consists of four precision matched J-FETs arranged in a complementary common-source differential amplifier topology; the second stage boasts four hand-selected MOSFETs, with the third amplification stage featuring eight high-power, Motorola bipolar output transistors in a fully-balanced, differential, complementary emitter-follower configuration. A unique DC-servo for each channel, limited only to the output stage and adhering to the zero global feedback design of the original Dreadnaught amplifier, eliminates the manual adjustment of DC offset at the amplifier outputs.

A single, massive 1100VA power transformer and a 35 amp bridge rectifier for all five channels sits right behind the centre of the fascia, and Wima film capacitors were used for power supply bypassing; each channel has its own capacitor bank for the output current gain stage. Also found inside are Nichicon electrolytic capacitors for power supply filtering, and three- and four-layer custom-made glass-epoxy circuit boards with heavy copper plating.

Key Features

More manageable dimensions
Massive soundstage
Precise imaging and a controlled sound

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