Audio Note Meishu Phono 300B Tonmeister

INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER

- KEN MICALLEF

My first high-end component was an Audio Note M2 preamplifier, which I bought from former Audio Note distributor/current Stereophile contributor Michael Trei. (Senior Contributing Editor Herb Reichert was Michael’s partner in that 1990s-era Audio Note venture.) Herb can regale you with tales of motoring across the Soviet Union in an unheated Mercedes, trunk full of Audio Note components and American dollars, but that’s a story for another review (most likely to be written by Herb).

The Audio Note M2 preamplifier was one of the most transparent audio products I’d ever heard, its single 6SN7 tube extremely sensitive to tube rolling. I spent countless hours researching RCA 5692s, Mullard ECC32s, RCA VT231s, and Sylvania 6SN7s and trying them out in the M2, each new, used, or new-old-stock tube producing stark differences in resolution, tone, soundstage, bass extension, and immediacy.

NOS tubes were cheap in the 1990s. I had boxes of them, especially of versions of the 6SN7 triode used in the M2. One frigid night, I rescued boxes of ancient radio tubes from an abandoned building on the corner of Mott and Houston in Soho, now a fashionable district with exorbitant rents, barely a 10-minute walk from Fi, Don Garber’s fabled shop at 30 Watts Street. How times and real estate values have changed.

I’ve covered Audio Note rooms at several recent hi-fi shows. After one recent show, Audio Note owner/CEO Peter Qvortrup asked me if I’d like to review one of their most recently introduced products, the Audio Note Meishu Phono 300B Tonmeister. After a quick consultation with Editor Jim Austin, I said yes.