Helmut Brinkmann's products have become something of a cult even outside his native Germany. The name conjures up not just superb build quality and fastidious attention to detail, but also smart looking , and above all, excellent sounding products. Believe it or not, it's actually quite hard to find all these attributes in one make, and sold at an affordable price! Although Brinkmann manufacture just about all the components to make a vinyl playing system, we concentrate on their integrated amplifier (above) and their Fein phono stage.

Integrated Amplifier

The Brinkmann Integrated is a remarkably compact affair; a beautiful piece of design work. The central feature is the big toroidal power transformer, and the amp actually sits on this, neatly solving the vibration grounding problem, and making a slimmer design as well. The rear of the amp is supported on two conical feet - put something between these and your support surface to avoid scratching!

The top of the housing is transparent, a sheet of glass. Done largely for sonic reasons, it also enforces neatness on the manufacturer. No hiding that crow's nest of wiring here! The selector switch settings are viewed through the top panel, and if you plump for the digital version of the amp, you get two digital inputs as well as the four standard analogue ones.

The digital version deserves a special mention, because for only GBP xxx more than the standard, you get a superb integral DAC for 32/44.1/48k, 18 bit / 8xOS with miniature valve (double triode) amplification / output stage. The sound from this improves over a vast number of CD players, and forms the ideal way of upgrading your digital source. Having two inputs, you also get the chance to feed from a digital tuner or minidisc etc as well.

The amplifier itself uses a high quality Alps potentiometer, with short signal path to the fully DC coupled power amplifier. Tape output is buffered, quite a rarity these days.

The other notable feature is the headphone socket. Yes, you didn't mis-read that, a genuine headphone socket, powered by it's own miniature amplifier, to avoid compromising the main speaker outputs. When you put the amp into standby mode, the main output stage switches off, and the headphone amp becomes active. Simple as that!

Brinkmann Integrated brief specs:
75W/ch into 8 Ohms, 120W/ch into 4 Ohms, input sensitivity 400mV, 4 line level inputs (+2 digital phono inputs on digital version), size 440W, 80H, 365D, all mm.
Now with IR remote control! Price: GBP T.B.A. (for standard version - digital version unavailable at present)

Fein Phono Stage

The Fein is a superb stand alone phono preamp. In fact, talking about standing, this product comes with it's very own granite slab, as pictured above, both for sonic and aesthetic reasons. Not only is a high quality volume control fitted, so is a proper buffer stage, with a decent 2V nominal output, to drive any power amplifier via any length of interconnect. None of your passive nonsense here! Although, of course, as these features are an integral part of the design, they don't detract from the performance of the Fein when used through a normal preamp, as most people will.

A back panel selector is provided for 3 gain settings, MM, MC, and inbetween, for those difficult to match pickups! The MM provides 47kOhms / 1mV matching, the MC 600 Ohms / 0.2mV, and the inbetween 600 Ohms / 0.5mV.

Output level for these input specs is 2V, with 10 Ohm output impedance.

Overall size is 12W, 5H, 28D, all mm

Price: GBP T.B.A.