Audio Gold are very pleased to be the London dealer for Icon Audio valve equipment. The Icon range fits very neatly into our philosophy of kit that is both sonically and visually beautiful, made properly out of high quality materials and components. Icon amps are designed to last long into the future, and be repairable should anything go wrong. In short, they are made the way things used to be made, the way most modern things are not.
Unlike many contemporary valve amps which use printed circuit boards, all Icon amps are hand wired
We don’t just want to make a quick sale. We offer full customer care support and service for the life of the product, like 2 years Guarantee, with spares and service available for the life of the product.
Not only do our amplifiers sound good they are very well made to give a long service life. We start with the philosophy hand made amplifiers using solid materials (not plastic) will last a long time and can be easily repaired for long into the future. We only use easily available parts and valves. We do not use printed circuit boards (PCBs), although they are cheap and easy to make, they are difficult or sometimes impossible to repair. In fact it is thought that humidity can become trapped in a PCB, affecting the sound quality (Morgan Jones). So we use the old hand wired “point to point” system. You will notice that our amplifiers have generally more power than other brands. This is not necessarily to play hi fi very loud, but the new types or recording such as CD, DVD, and various TV and radio digital systems have a big “Dynamic Range” which in turn needs more powerful amplifiers to reproduce the louder “peaks” of music without distortion.
We only make “Pure Valve” amplifiers, there are no transistors or micro-chips in
the audio circuit.
You can have complete confidence in Icon Audio products. After four or five years the valves in your amplifier may need replacing. Our manual tells you how to do this. We can supply replacement tubes for you, or you could return the amplifier for a service. Or just phone or email for advice. After this time with a new set of valves your amplifier will sound even better than new! Icon Audio amplifiers are guaranteed in Asia for two years (excluding valves).
Why do Icon make so many amplifiers
Valve amplifier design covers period of roughly 80 years, during this time there has been a myriad of different valves and designs all with their own different characteristics, and the Icon Audio UK lab likes to explore these differences so that the customer can make the choice.
Valve Types
All the early valves were simple “triode” (3 elements) generally these give the best sound but in output valves are not very efficient (e.g.300B, 845, 805). Post war types are the efficient more complex “pentode” types (5 elements), these valves use less power for the same output. However the sound is generally not thought to be so good as the old triodes, so a system called:
“Ultralinear” (or UL) is commonly used which is a combination of triode and pentode, in order to get good power with the triode sound. It is also possible to use to use modern valves as “pure” triodes, with a reduction in power. Therefore most of our amplifiers are fitted with the UL/Triode switch to give you the choice of the different sound system.
Push Pull v Single Ended
Generally “Push Pull” is the favoured system for power output, using two output valves. This gives good power, low distortion and low noise. But some people favour the “Single Ended) SE method using one output valve, thinking that this has great purity despite the disadvantages. The main one being low power. Our new MB805 power amplifiers use this method to great success, using one 805 transmitter type valve, 3 years in design, we are very proud of its beautiful sound.