Well, 150 lbs or so of beef...........
There are a ton of changes and upgrades as compared to the Kismets..........
- thicker boards with nearly twice the copper in the traces (5oz), and with the highest and purest copper available for these application..
- Different input and output stages as well as necessary several parts changes and upgrades to the main board
- special dampening of the board in the isolation to the chassis
- Specially designed power supply regulation board, which is a biggie for the sound quality improvements
All of these changes also required a different biasing setup ...while we have between 19 - 20 mV on the red and the Kismet boards, the Meilenstein amps are best at around 14.5 - 15 mV biasing...this, together with the new output stages means that the amplifiers run pretty much at room temperature most of the time, and get only moderately hot when driven really hard. This negates external heat sinks, and saves space and money....
I don't have exact specs yet, but it'll be close to those of the Extremes...except sooo much more current ....
- again, on the power supply side, transformers are 1680 W. total .
- 492,000 uF capacitance
all of the PS parts are sourced from Germany, pretty much some of the best parts quality that money can buy without going nuts
With the new PS supply board the main board is being fed now by 70 amps instead of 35 amps bridge rectifiers. Think of each mono being mono'd out twice in the PS.....and yes, each mono has a total of 3 boards !!!!!!!!!
- Ultra Linear 70A Power Supply.
- Use of Two Vishay 35A each Glass Passivated Single-Phase Bridge Rectifier.
- High Surge Current Capability with Low Thermal Resistance.
- Two Fully Independent (35 amps)Rails for Positive and Negative Voltages to the Complementary Toshiba Output Transistors. (.These provides incredible detail to inner phase shift on music recordings)
- Double copper molding on the PCB Circuit Board for high current application.
Overall this newly designed PS in conjunction with the Main Amplifier board will provide great separation of instruments within the sound-stage. There is a clear sense of space and air between the many instruments and voices. The outlines of instruments and space is breathtaking, yes, but also the width and especially the depth of good recording is spectacular...as is the flow of decays of instruments ...
As I mentioned before, this falls squarely into the "luxury sound" territory, no question.
I still have to get numbers together for final pricing, but there's soooooo much money in the parts alone. Also, I have a good lock on my production time...Without machining time etc...just me, my time of hand making every step, I'm at around 32 - 34 hours of labor in the Meilenstein monos..!!!!!!!!!!
Just the custom transformers are now over $ 700./ piece my cost ( around 3 K total) !!!!!!!!!!!!! But worth it every penny. However, there might be the option of using Toroid of MD's potted transformers instead, which should bring the pricing of the 4 units to around 10 K.........!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So, they'll be at least $ 12,500 / set...minimum. And yes, I can ultimately upgrade existing amps....to a certain point.
