Primo (DISCONTINUED) - Overview
A bold but true statement: the Primo is the best pre-amplifier we’ve ever made.
The result of 12 years of research and development here at Musical Fidelity, the Primo produces superlative sound, is beautifully built and is extremely reliable.
It’s a reference-standard tube design: from the glow of its hand-selected, long-life tubes to its British-built solidity and exquisite pure Class A performance.
As Michael Fremer wrote in his Stereophile review: “The Primo elicited from me an immediate and enormous "Wow!" that I still felt even after weeks of listening.”
Regardless of volume level, the Primo delivers exceptional, consistent results, due to its total system linearity. It seamlessly makes the most of just about any hi-fi source – via its array of line-level and balanced connections – and perfectly partners with its sibling AMS power amps.
The Primo is a truly extraordinary pre-amp - if you want to recapture the magic of music, it has to be heard.
Primo (DISCONTINUED) - Design and Build
It took more than a decade to engineer the Primo, our flagship pre-amplifier. We conducted exhaustive studies of layouts, circuit diagrams, components and materials. Our findings have gone into making the Primo different from – and better than – any previous pre-amplifier.
Essentially, the Primo is a zero-feedback, pure Class A, triode, fully balanced pre-amp. It uses 14, hand-picked ECC81s tubes, which – thanks to the Primo’s optimised circuit and power supply design – have a life of around 10,000 hours.
Power supply performance is especially critical for tube-based pre-amps, so we housed the Primo PSU in Mu-metal, ensuring there’s no magnetic interference with any of the delicate, signal-handling components. There is a fully regulated HT and heater circuit for both channels.
We’ve engineered the Primo to deliver a completely linear performance, regardless of the input, frequency and volume levels, the amplifier it’s driving and the length of cable concerned. Accordingly, the Primo is designed with extremely low inter-stage coupling impedance – ensuring consistent performance across all frequencies and volumes. It offers five pairs of line-level inputs and five pairs of balanced inputs.
The output stage is equally important. Unlike other tube pre-amps, which drive amps with a single tube configuration, the Primo uses two parallel pairs of output tubes on both its balanced and single-ended connections (which include a pair of tape outputs). To further boost its flexibility, the Primo has a huge overload margin and a colossal peak output level.
The results of our tireless engineering efforts are superlative, standing-setting technical performance: minimal distortion, remarkable signal-to-noise ratio, and wide bandwidth. This has a clearly audible effect, as Michael Fremer noted in his Stereophile review: “Musical Fidelity's AMS Primo is among the most transparent tube preamplifiers I've heard in terms of transient speed, frequency extension, subjectively flat response, low audible distortion, and low noise floor.”
The Primo produces a free, open sound, with voices and instruments perfectly placed within a vast soundstage. Dynamics are delivered incredibly quickly and disappear faithfully fast, with no unnatural overhang. From delicate musical detail and emotive vocals through to dramatic slam and raw power, the Primo serves it up with a speed and realism that characterises true high-end hi-fi.
Such skill deserves to live in an equally timeless design, which is why we’ve spent considerable time and money making the Primo as beautiful and well built as possible. The front panel is machined from solid, military-grade aluminium with an exclusive titanium G2 finish. The tops and sides are also made from solid aluminium, finished to the highest standard, with the attention to detail extending right down to the Primo’s badges – crafted from medical-grade stainless steel. Even the Primo’s remote control features solid aluminium casing and buttons.
To quote Michael Fremer’s Stereophile review once more: “the Musical Fidelity AMS Primo is a beautifully built, visually sophisticated, technically competent, evidently reliable, fully balanced, high-performance tube component that was a pleasure to live with, look at, and use. It also produces superb, musically graceful sound—I recommend it”.
