Curious to read opinions of this classic amp I was surprised that only three old reviews existed, then I thought it might be useful to someone looking for a bargain if I shared my long time experience with this product. I get the chance to hear some really expensive and well regarded equipment and have come to the conclusion that unless you take great care to optimise and sympathetically match all aspects in the audio chain, you will get inferior performance from even the best gear. So, if your requirements are for an affordable, powerful, MUSICAL, reliable, monoblock solid state class A/B amp, I'd say go for this one. The only thing that has let me down in the 10 plus years of ownership is the plastic grip on the binding post stripped from it's spline when I overtightened with a spanner. If you are prepared to modify, there is one simple and effective change I would make - remove the rubber strips that run the length of the amp and serve as the feet. Doing so creates a better path for energy to exit from the component and once you do this, the slight tonal greyness the amp previously had dissappears, clarity improves and I feel both micro and macro dynamics are better also. Removing the rubber strips without damaging them will be difficult and will probably devalue the amps slightly but if you intend to keep them, it's worth doing and will save you a great deal of time and expense finding something that offers this much musical satisfaction. My performance rating after removing the rubber strips is 4.5 stars and 5 gold stars for value.

More headroom is, simply, always available. Heatsink casework great for heating your room.

Capable of eating a lesser speaker. Have done this many times.

What can I say? These monoblocs have aesthetic class and sonically they are the business. Without spending a king's ransom I'd say they would be very hard to beat on any count. With 200 Genuine British Watts on tap each, the headroom is phenomenal and no signs of strain creep in even when driving current-hungry speakers at high volumes (which I'm a big fan of). They aren't the purest or most analytical amps in the world, however I prefer to enjoy the music rather than analyse it. As with most Musical fidelity amps, there is a richness and warmth to the low end that never descends into mushiness, and the top end is clean and detailed. Vocals have an open, natural yet sweet sound, especially using speakers with metal dome tweeters. From Led Zep through to Vivaldi and an array of Electronica, I have yet to find a fault aside from careful partnering of Preamps. Its never going to go totally pear-shaped but results will be so much better with a clean, tight sounding one. I did, at one point, swap them for MF's newer M250 monoblocs and for a week or so relished their sharpness, clarity and tight bass. I then swapped them back over and after 30 seconds the M250's were heading back to the shop due to their total lack of involvement in comparison. And they were nearly twice as much lolly. This has also happened to a few more power amps...

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The look.
Easy to place.
Very solid built, will handle most speakers in any system.

None technically, The rubber underneath the suspension seems a little sticky to the table.

I feel like privileged to be the first to write a review on these monoblocks.
Got the equipment apprx. two months ago and have so far had many great hours listening to my new equipment. First of all I would like to explain my set up.
I got a Musical Fidelity E624 CD player, which has been a pleasant fellowship so far.
As a pre-amp I am using the Nuvista (All previously reviews should comment this product) and the speakers are a kind of home made 3 way, specially construction from Eltek in Norway with Seas speaker elements. The size of the speaker is a little above 150 liters with a height of 105 cm a gives a lot of bass since they are vented.
Between the components I'm using the Cardas interlink cable.

The only weakness in this set up as far as I can see, is the speaker cable, and probably also the speaker itself since it has not been professionally tested and tuned yet.
Anyway, so far I can only speak vith superlatives.
The sound is so crystal clear, that when the preamp is at 12 O'clock you can still be able to conversate unless there's sombody singing on the record or the musical frequency is the same as your vocal one. I would not be able to tell how many dB music there are in the room then at the same time.
In my set up the X-A200 monoblocks are very easy to control, but I would certainly love to hear other opinions about this in other systems.
If you are looking for great value for money, nothing will at this moment beat these two attractive looking tube Monoblocks.

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Dynamic Precision.

Power,control.build

Glassy topend,low quality inner wiring

The bass control even when having to keep hold of a pair of rather inefficient Thiels pounding out some Metallica is pretty impressive. However as you progress up the frequency range things get a little painful. Womens voices are quite sibilent and ditto the electric 'axe'.The looks and build are to H.G.V standards.The operating switch isn't the easiest thing to get at ,so the amp spends its life facing the wrong way! All in all a pretty good source of immense grunt and detail for a reasonable amount of money, but its time to upgrade now to something less painful. Valves spring to mind but not at this kind of money.

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