It all began at the HI-FI '97 show, at the bar of course, where things like this seem to happen. J. Gordon Holt was with his traditional martini, and EveAnna Manley with her stimulant of choice, a cup of coffee. She was describing a new, integrated amplifier she wanted to build and sketched one of those legendary "bar napkin drawings". Gordon remarked, "It looks like a stingray!" (the fish, not the car.) And so, in honor of J. Gordon Holt, we call this catch of the day: "The Stingray". No stinger, but it sure does pack a punch!
EveAnna arrived at this distinguished chassis design after careful research of optimal component placement for the purity and symmetry of the signal path layout. She also set out to reclaim the rich midrange and silky top end of our vintage designs and combine it with a driving low frequency register which had not previously been achieved with MANLEY's smaller amplifiers.
The key to realizing this all-encompassing, driving spirit would be found in a new output transformer design which "Hutch" Hutchison and Michael Hunter set upon with great vigor. Armed with our extensive technical library and in-house transformer winding facilities, they returned to more traditional thinking with the clever twists coming along at the end. Measuring, listening, testing and tuning led to a decision to replace our venerable 15 year old input stage with an innovative and fresh contribution from Paul Fargo. The door to "true Soul" was unlocked and burst open wide.
Separate left and right silver-contact select switches (for the four stereo line inputs) deliver your music into the premium Noble® balance and volume controls before hitting the first 12AT7 input tubes. The advantages of a passive preamp driving an extremely short and low capacitance two inches of cable are well known: near-absolute transparency, no added noise, and extreme signal path simplicity. This is the perfect place to implement a passive preamp as it were.
Following the mighty 6414 driver/phase splitter, the trusty EL84 output stage can be switched between either around 20 watts of TRIODE or 40 watts of Ultra Linear mode push-pull operation. Individual bias for each tube is easily adjusted using the trimpots and test points, conveniently located on the top surface of the amplifier. The Stingray's power supply is extra-rugged and stiff, a MANLEY hallmark. It swims with the sharks: fast, agile, fluid, and with consummate authority.
Features And Specifications
- 4 x Stereo Line RCA Inputs
- TRIODE - UL Switching
- RECORDING OUT
- SUBWOOFER OUT
- TAPE LOOP (Insert) with Bypass switch
- Passive Noble Volume and Balance Controls
- All-Vacuum Tube Lo-feedback Stereo Integrated Design
- Output Tubes: 8 x EL84 Ships with Russian EL84M (We are out of Ei 6BQ5.)
- Driver Tubes: 2 x 6414 Ships with GE or RAYTHEON JAN NOS USA or 6414W
- Input Tubes: 2 x 12AT7EH Ships with: 12AT7EH large plate Electro-Harmonix Russian
- Maximum Output Power UL mode: 40 Watts x 2 channels 1.5% THD @ 1kHz
- Maximum Output Power TRIODE mode: 20 Watts x 2 channels
- Frequency Response: 15 Hz - 40 kHz, -1dB
- Gain: 37 dB at max Volume
- Input Sensitivity: 185 mV in = 50 watts out into 5 ohms
- Input Sensitivity Triode: 66mV in = 1W into 8 ohms
- Input Sensitivity UL: 53mV in = 1W into 8 ohms
- S/N Ratio: typically 87 dB A-WGT, 20Hz-20KHz
- Input Impedance: 50 Kohm nominal
- Optimum Speaker Load: 5 ohms
- Actual Output Impedance at 20Hz: 2.8 ohms at 100Hz: 2.6 ohms, at 1KHz: 2 ohms
- Damping Factor: 5
- Power Consumption Idle: 200W
- Maximum Power Consumption at Full Power: 370W