It seems to me that between two Polish audio producers, based in Jarocin, PYLON AUDIO , a loudspeaker manufacturer, and FEZZ AUDIO located in Księżno, a town near Białystok, several similarities can be pointed out. The first is obvious - they are Polish companies. The second, less visible one is equally important - these are companies built from scratch by their bosses, and family businesses in addition.
Both have their headquarters in small centers. And finally there is something that makes them more than just a local curiosity - they are dynamically developing.
An example of this is the series of phono preamplifiers with the Fezz Audio logo.
Its base is a well-known company producing toroidal transformers - Toroidy.pl. Fezz Audio is run by Maciek Lachowski, and Toroidy.pl by his dad, Lech Lachowski and brother Tomasz.
No wonder that Fezz uses its parent company experience in all of its products, even when it comes to speaker transformers. Her offer was built slowly but consistently.
The company showed its first project, Laura amplifier, during the Audio Video Show 2014 exhibition. A year later, it presented the basis of its offer, based on EL34 tubes, an integrated push-pull amplifier called Silver Luna . Then came the next ones on KT88 and PCL86 tubes, and then returned to SE projects, with the Mira Ceti models on 300B tubes and Mira Ceti 2A3 , the amplifier on 2A3 tubes, which is used, for example, by Wojciech Padjas from RMF Classic radio and violinist jazz Adam Bałdych. Last year it was time to develop the offer naturally. Phono preamplifiers appeared in it. Maciek Lachowski, director of Fezz Audio, will talk about the latest project, the Gratia preamplifier.
After all, a tube amplifier and turntable is an absolutely natural connection, which resulted from many conversations with our clients. The project was a bit delayed due to the commonly known ... lack of time. Wojtek Padjas turned out to be the catalyst for its completion, who asked me to design and build a phono preamplifier that he could use in the conditions of a radio studio while preparing the program Music under the needle for RMF Classic radio.
The assumptions were: the device was to support MM, MC, HO MC cartridges, including mono, it had two separate inputs for work with a studio turntable equipped with two arms, it had to have two parallel outputs, a mono adder, gain control and the ability to change the tone.
We started design work in January 2019.
Tests and final closing of everything in a compact housing took us almost four months. We wanted to finish this project before the first of June 2019, when the Kościuszko Mound was to host a special edition of Music from a Needle Live, under the patronage of "High Fidelity", prepared jointly by "Wojtków two", i.e. Wojtek Padjas and - known to the state - Wojtek Pacuła :)
The device sounded, although not yet as we would like. After this event, I called Robert Bajkowski (the guy running the blog Audiofezzowanie.pl) wanting to tell him a little bit about Music from a live needle .
Robert has been designing and making cinema audio installations for 25 years. It so happened that he just upgraded his CD player, in which he used Burson operational amplifiers (opamps).
He offered to lend me these "cubes" so that I could try them in this Wojtkowa preamp, from which I was still not completely satisfied (Wojtek was not).
wasn't sure if the sound I would like would suit Wojtek, so I cut a hole in the preamplifier housing above the opamp stand and sent it to it, adding a few different opamps to the package.
The set includes such basic models as 5532, more advanced OPA2132, also the mentioned Bursons. Wojtek's final choice fell on the orange Burson V6 version - nomen omen - Classic.
Then this our prototype preamp went to the hands of Paweł "Bemol" Ładniak , a mastering specialist who liked the opportunity to easily exchange opams. Maybe it's stupid to write like that, but together with Wojtek they praised the sound of our preamplifier for hours, which - I can't hide it - was very nice. So we knew we had a good product. We only introduced minor changes to it. We have removed "studio" functions that are unnecessary in home systems, we have added what might be useful, such as a subsonic filter, and this is how the Gratia MM / MC model was created. In the production version I decided to use the Burson Audio Supreme Sound V5i integrated circuit. I decided that the sound is the most universal. The name of the preamplifier does not have any special genesis. The entire series had to start with the same letter. In this case it is 'G'.
The preamplifier line will be crowned with a tube Gloria.
| GRATIA
Gratia is the largest Fezz Audio phono preamplifier so far. In addition to this manufacturer's offer, we will also find two smaller devices of this type: costing PLN 1099 Gaia mini and Gaia mini, both intended for MM and MC HO cartridges, for PLN 1599. Both are small - their front wall is 70 and 163 mm wide, respectively. The first one is for MM inserts, and the second for MM and MC HO inserts. Gratia is bigger, because it is a (almost) full-size device, the front of which is the same width as the amplifiers of this company (340 mm). In the tested version, the casing, made of rigid steel sheet, was painted black, with the front in black to a high gloss. In addition to black, there are also three others that the company also uses in its amplifiers: white, red and burgundy.
I wonder how Gratia would look like in a "hammer" varnish, from which audio devices were known in the 1950s, for example QUAD ... functionality
| The tested preamplifier is made extremely solidly and sensibly. On the front panel we have nothing but the white backlit, laser cut manufacturer's logo, because all the buttons are on the back. We have an insert type switch there, we can turn on the subsonic filter, choose the gain for the MM input and change the stereo signal to mono. There is no load regulation for MC cartridges. Cartridge type - known: MM or MC, or Moving Magnet, with an output voltage of up to 5 mV and Moving Coil, with a voltage of 0.5 to 2 mV. The first of them is loaded with an impedance of 47 kΩ, and the load of the second manufacturer closes in the range of 50 - 1 kΩ, but does not give the exact value. Thanks to the gain switch (+5 dB) we can also use MC HO cartridges. The entrances were somewhat unusual. Usually there is one common for both MM and MC cartridges. Here we have separate inputs for each type of insert. So, for example, you can connect two arms at the same time. Or else - we can also connect a matching transformer (so-called step-up ), shortening the signal path - we enter directly into the MM section. Or simply use the MC HO cartridge, which will have a short signal path. And this is probably what it was about - shortening the path in which the signal is transmitted. technique
| Electrically, it is an elegant, quite simple system. The MC input is supported by low-noise transistors, while the MM input, and thus the second amplification stage for the MC, through a single integrated circuit for both channels (to which we will return soon). The board is classically made using through hole assembly, so it was possible to use high quality passive elements. The circuit board with the audio system was placed at the back wall so that the input and output sockets - really nice - were soldered directly to it. As a result, the signal path is shortened, and thus noise is reduced. And the noise in the phono preamplifier is the biggest problem, because we amplify the microscopic signal to a level comparable with the output of the CD player. Interesting fact - the amplifying systems and the power supply are bolted to an additional element, stiffening the structure, and this is bolted to the top wall, i.e. the systems are upside down. This technique is known and often used, but in tube amplifiers. What can you see in the tube DNA from Fezz Audio? The casing is additionally damped with mats stuck to the upper and lower walls. The power supply for the entire system is single, with one symmetrical voltage and one unbalanced. It uses a high-class Supreme Audio Grade toroidal transformer Toroidy.pl. It was locked in a metal screen. Voltage stabilizers deal with integrated stabilizers. Let us add that the electrical system is responsible for the engineer Fezz Audio, Mr. Zdzisław Kulikowski - the man also responsible for the creation of Silver Luna - and the final optimization of the RIAA curve was carried out "by ear" Maciek Lachowski.
| BURSON AUDIO, which is the reverse of the integrated circuit Opamp starring
| The main amplifying element of the Gratia preamplifier is the Burson Audio Supreme V5i integrated circuit . This is a risky move for the manufacturer, which is associated with lamps. However, as far as I understand it, the idea was to offer music lovers a product that would be affordable. Read - inexpensive. And indeed, looking at the prices of all three models, how carefully they were made, despite very decent prices, it seems that the idea has burned out. There are a lot of inexpensive, cool phono preamplifiers on the market. For larger companies, it's enough to mention Pro-Ject, Cambridge Audio, Arcam, NAD, and Music Hall, and there are plenty of small producers, often almost at the DIY level. To stand out, it was not enough to propose a good or even very good product. So Fezz Audio reached for an idea that was known but surprisingly rarely used in commercial products - it offered the user the opportunity to change the main amplification system. Replacing opampów
| I don't know if you remember, but some time ago there was a product on the market that offered something similar - it was the ASUS Xonar Essence One digital-to-analog converter, available in three versions - basic, Xonar Essence One Plus and Xonar Essence One Muses. For the latter, the user received tweezers and additional integrated circuits that he could exchange, changing the sound as well. The most expensive version has permanently installed expensive, valued Muses 01 systems from the Japanese company New Japan Radio (my test of these transducers in the 2013 Audio magazine HERE , access: 23.03.2020). In the preamplifier the Gratia is similar. It's just that "Fezzowcy" went all this time. Already in the basic version we get an excellent, rarely used (because expensive) integrated circuit Burson Audio Supreme V5i. This is an integrated (operational) circuit about which the manufacturer says "hybrid circuit", enclosed in a metal screen. 'Hybrid' because, although its basis is the SMD operating system, the screen also includes high-class capacitors and resistors from the Japanese TDK company. This system has FET input and is a replacement for a lot of different systems, for example from Burr-Brown OPA series, but also classic NE5532. Vivid / Classic
| Together with the Gratia preamplifier, we received from Fezz Audio two other systems - even more expensive and even more interesting:
Burson Audio V6 Vivid Dual and Burson Audio V6 Classic Dual. According to their producer, they are the result of twenty years of work and five previous generations.
These are still the so-called OP-AMP, or operational amplifiers , but they have little in common with "chips".
The element that connects them is an eight-leg mounting in the base, but apart from that almost everything divides.
HOW WE LISTENED
The Fezz Audio Gratia phono preamplifier was tested in the "High Fidelity" reference system. The signal path looked like this: BennyAudio Immersio turntable → Fezz Audio Gratia phono preamplifier → RCA Crystal Cable Absolute Dream interconnect → Ayon Audio Spheris III line preamplifier → RCA Acoustic Revive Absolute interconnect → Soulution 710 power amplifier → Siltech Triple Crown loudspeaker cables → Harbeth speakers M40.1. Gratia was compared to my long-term reference, the RCM Audio Sensor Prelude IC preamplifier . During the test I used three different cartridges: Ortofon 2M Black (MM), Denon DL-103 (MC) and Miyajima Laboratory Madake (MC). I would add that I placed a Nordost QPoint noise generator on the preamplifier , which took care of reducing interference inside the device, and the signal from the turntable to the preamplifier was sent via Amplifier Surgery interconnects .
| SUMMARY
Fezz Audio's Gratia is a thoughtful, mature device. I missed the load regulation of the insert a bit, but I understand that somewhere you had to make savings to be able to do something else. In my opinion, this is a good compromise. Because, besides, this is a well-equipped device, and the mono button, if of course we have such discs, is a great help and really improves the reliability of the message.
As usual with Fezz Audio - good job! ■
Technical data (according to manufacturer)
Type: Phono preamplifier for MM, HO / MC, MC cartridges
Power consumption: 12 W MM input impedance
| MC: 47 kΩ | 50 Ω - 1 kΩ Stabilized power supply path + Supreme Audio Grade toroidal transformer Toroidy.pl
Gain system: Burson Audio Supreme V5i
Dimensions (width x height x depth): 340 x 320 x 80 mm Weight: 4.2 kg
Πληροφοριες και τιμες εδω :
https://www.chameleonracks.gr/Fezz%20audio%20amplifiers/Gratia-MM-MC--en