Rega Elex-R Integrated Amplifier

1642

New product

Limited special offer

975,41 €

1 246,72 €

Available for immediate shipping.

Brand: Rega

 
Description

The Elex-R is a sublime blend of the Brio-R design with the power circuits and advanced phono stage of the Elicit-R. Rega’s engineers have achieved the perfect balance of power, control and dynamics, delivering a performance that always puts the music first.

You will find plenty of connectivity options allowing complete flexibility and integration within the rest of the Rega range.

Winner of the WHAT HI-FI 2014 Award for Best stereo amp.

Design Innovation

The Elex-R is built to the highest standard and designed to deliver the best possible audio performance whilst remaining simple to use and easy to setup.The Elex-R is built into the full width Rega case with increased heat dissipation, which along with a larger transformer enables the Elex-R to deliver 90 Watts per channel into 6Ω and 72.5 Watts per channel into a design centre rating of 8.

Our time, effort & money have been spent on developing the circuit and construction utilizing the highest specification of components throughout. As part of the design we have included useful features like pre-amplifier output, to enable the new Elex-R amplifier to be used in a wide combination of systems and have avoided superfluous gadgets such as tone controls or a headphone socket as they can obstruct the signal path and degrade the produced sound quality.

The Elex-R has been built to Rega’s extremely high standards of reliability and quality to ensure many years of musical enjoyment. The primary function of an amplifier is to boost and equalize the low level signal generated by a phono cartridge, DAC and CD player or other source component to a level that can drive the loudspeakers. It is vital that the amplifier achieves this whilst minimising distortion, as this would directly affect the music. The distortion level is typically 0.007%; just under the clipping of the output.

The volume control and pre-amplifier used in the Elex-R is designed to overcome the problems associated with the standard arrangement. This design uses a custom chip along with peripheral support IC’s like a microcontroller and a custom made rotary volume control.

The Elex-R uses a combined feedback and passive volume control, where the feedback and input levels are varied to set the required volume level. The level and tracking between the two channels is set by the close tolerance parts in the pre-amplifier circuit and less by the actual potentiometer itself, thus keeping the mismatch of channels due to volume control tracking irregularities to a minimum.As well as keeping tracking irregularities to a minimum, this method also reduces noise and input overload as the control will only ‘use’ the required gain to amplify the signal.This form of volume control is normally only found in professional broadcast environments where accurate low noise control of levels is required.

Power Amplifier Technology

The output amplifier used in the Elex-R, Elicit-R and Brio-R was born after extensive research by our engineers to develop a low source impedance emitter follower Class-A driver stage. This is based around a complementary pair of 150w Sanken Darlington output transistors. The technical and sonic improvement gained by the use of low impedance drivers is well known, however, it can feature high standing currents in the driver stage when using standard transistor configurations. By combining the low impedance driver with the Sanken Darlington transistors (with their imbedded thermal bias network running at a lower standing current) this combination forms a complementary emitter follower emulating Class-A conditions with good thermal stability with lower standing.

Key features

  • Rega custom full width case with improved heat dissipation
  • Combined feedback & passive volume control pre-amp
  • 90 watts per channel into 6 Ohms / 72 watts into 8ohms
  • High specification integrated phono stage
  • New multi-lingual user manual
  • Enhanced power supplies for the driver stage
  • Hybrid of the Brio-R and Elicit-R design
  • Dedicated mini remote handset included
  • Pre-amp out / Record out / 4 line inputs
  • New custom transformer

Specifications

  • Power Supply
  • Voltage: 230v & 115v
  • Frequency: 50/60Hz
  • Power Consumption: 250 Watts
  • 230v Fuse: T3.15AL 20mm
  • 115v Fuse: T5AL 20mm
  • Dimensions W 430mm x D 320mm x H 80mm

Output power

  • 72.5W 8Ω both channels driven - Design centre rating    
  • 90W 6Ω both channels driven - Rega speaker impedance rating
  • 113W 4Ω both channels driven

Phono input

  • Sensitivity (72.5W 8Ω1.7mV (Load 47K in parallel with 220pF)
  • Maximum input level: 100mV

Line input

  • Sensitivity (72.5W 8Ω 164mv (Load 30-50K)
  • Maximum input level: 10v

Tape output

  • Level: 164mV with rated input
  • Output impedance: 470

Line output

  • Level: 625mV with rated input
  • Output impedance: 600
 
Designer

The first Rega - A star is born

Roy was now working for Ford as a technical editor but spent most of his free time installing friend's hi-fi equipment and building loudspeakers to sell. He became a part time retailer and found he had to spend a ridiculous amount of time repairing new turntables before his conscience and common sense would allow him to sell them to others! Out of frustration and a strong feeling he could do better, the Planet turntable was born. Roy and a partner registered "Rega" (Tony RElph, Roy GAndy). In 1973 and for a couple of years, Roy stayed at Ford and made turntables in the evening, helped by his partners: mum (who agreed to help out for two weeks and stayed for fifteen years!) and a succession of lads. The first turntables were sold through Cosmocord in the UK and a year later under the Rega name in West Germany, Denmark and France.

Roy was now able to leave Ford; he collected a redundancy check and promptly blew it on a factory in Rochford. Soon after the partnership with Tony Relph split, Roy swapping his share of Rega. Terry Davies joined as Rega's financial administrator.

In 1975 the Planar 2 was developed and quickly took its place in the market as the finest budget turntable. In June 1977 HI-FI News and Record Review announced the Planar 3 saying "The complete unit is worth a look"! Rega's usual blaze of non-publicity.

By 1980 Rega employed thirteen staff, exported to twelve countries, had twenty UK dealers and there were those dreaded 'waiting lists', mainly by eager customers shop-hopping!

 In 1980 Roy found an old mill (Park Street) in a residential area in Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex. The building had been deserted for twenty years and judging by the rot, seemed to have a millstream still running through it! Rega snapped it up for £30,000 and turned it into a compact but highly functional hi-fi factory, liberally painted bright green.

In 1983 after five years of dabbling and two years of intensive development, the RB300 and RB250 tonearms were produced. For ten years Rega had used Japanese and Danish manufactured arms on the turntables but after some searching Roy found a casting company prepared to work with him to develop an entirely new production method enabling the one-piece tube to be cast.

Rega won an international award for the RB300 casting, presented by Modern Metals 'awarded in open competition for excellence in the field of Aluminium Die Casting'. In their accompanying letter they wrote: 'we are still trying to figure out how you produce such a long cored hole so accurately'. This made up for never winning any prizes breeding budgies!

For five years, Rega sold a cartridge, the R100, made to specification in Japan. This was followed by the RB100, which was designed and developed by Rega. However, the cartridge had inevitable design limitations as it was being manufactured by an outside company.

In March 1988 the Bias and Elys cartridges went into production in house and sales exceeded 1000 in the first month, five times more than anticipated! The cartridges were a vital step on the way to a complete Rega system.

Completing the system...

In the summer of 1989 the Ela loudspeaker was introduced. Designed and developed at Rega, they were originally produced in Denmark but soon thereafter were manufactured in house.

In 1991, a period of dramatic expansion was heralded with the move into the world of electronics and the launch of two amplifiers, the Elex and the Elicit. The reason for producing these two amplifiers was simple; Rega was presented with a design it could not resist! Most importantly, the amplifiers fit into the company policy - which is to manufacture high quality, specialist hi-fi components that are reliable, consistent and sensibly priced. This development completed the Rega system.

A new factory was built in 1992 on the Temple Farm Industrial Estate in Southend-on-Sea under Roy's design and guidance to house the production of loudspeakers and amplifiers and to ensure room for further developments.

2014....

Over the past 40 years we have come a very long way. Now selling to more than 40 export markets and producing on average 2000 turntables alone every month, Rega now employ's almost 90 people in our purpose built 30,000 sq ft design and manufacturing facility in Essex, England.

Rega continues to grow and develop new products, all of which strictly follow those early Rega virtues of excellent build quality, long life and amazing value for money all backed up by a lifetime warranty against manufacture defects.

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Rega Elex-R Integrated Amplifier

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Comments(1)
10/25/2020

REGA ELEX-R:VALE TUTTI I SOLDI CHE COSTA

Ho comprato il REGA ELEX -R circa un mese fa per i seguenti motivi: avevo bisogno di un amplificatore di almeno 70 watt per le mie Monitor Audio Gold 100, perchè insoddisfatto (parzialmente) del suono del “Crescendo” Audio Analogue di soli 50 watt, perchè i prodotti inglesi mi sono sempre piaciuti per la loro “essenzialità”, perchè convinto dagli utili consigli del signor Ventura, perchè dal 2014 al 2018 il Rega Elex-R ha vinto il “What.Hi-Fi Awards “come migliore amplificatore della sua categoria. Insomma una scelta ponderata, soddisfacente e che rifarei senza indugi.
Mentre vi scrivo ascolto Glenn Gould in una registrazione inedita pubblicata qualche anno fa. Non è una semplice rimasterizzazione di materiali scovati per caso ma l’incisone delle sue prove presso gli studi della Columbia nel 1955 mentre registrava la prima versione delle “Goldberg”, suo insuperabile capolavoro esecutivo. Per chi conosce la sua voce e gli studi della Columbia per averli visti decina di volte nei film di Bruno Monsaingeon sa che non c’è nulla di più difficile da riprodurre per un impianto stereofonico, perchè Glenn Gould canticchia mentre suona, siede in modo atipico sulla sua strana seggiolina ( dal basso in alto) e suona su di un pianoforte che ha la velocità di un clavicembalo ( il famoso Steinway CD 318). Poi ci sono i rumori dei suoi passi che si spostano da destra a sinistra, il suonare lo stesso passaggio decine di volte, l’ambienza della grande sala della Columbia, le chiacchiere dei tecnici di registrazione, insomma c’è tutto per mettere in difficoltà un sistema di riproduzione. Il piccolo Rega Elex-R da 70 watt se la cava bene e se la cava meglio del Crescendo della Audio Analogue, amplificatore dal suono elegante ma impacciato nel “guidare” le mie Monitor Audio Gold 100. Il Rega - inglese come i diffusori - si trova a suo agio tanto che i diffusori sembrano gradire questa “spinta in più” al punto tale che la musica è diventata ora più corposa, vivace, presente, insomma in una sola parola ho aggiunto quantità e qualità . Suona bene e chiaro il pianoforte di Glenn Gould, ma altrettanto bene suona il pianoforte della Nina Simone in “Live Montreux”, una delle poche registrazioni decenti di questa grande artista; la sua voce è corposa, calda, ritmica, non troppo avanti nè troppo indietro e se alzo il volume oltre metà corsa non c’è distorsione tanto che le Monitor assecondano la forza di questo piccolo amplificatore. Se metto su l’Adagietto della Quinta di Mahler ( DG/Berliner/Abbado/1993) o l’Allegro della Quinta di Shostakovich (Sony/CBS/NY Philharmonica/Bernstein/1959) il Rega - con le dovute proporzioni - non mi fa rimpiangere l’ascolto con impianti di “caratura superiore”; riesce ad essere sufficientemente elegante e preciso nei pianissimi di Mahler e generoso nei pieni orchestrali di Shostakovich. Resto dell’idea che se un amplificatore, un diffusore o meglio un impianto suonano bene con la musica classica allora suoneranno bene con qualsiasi brano musicale, perchè riuscire ad “amplificare e diffondere” le sonorità musicali di un pieno orchestrale esiguito da 50 e più musicisti è cosa diversa che riprodurre una voce accompagnata da quattro strumenti. Il Rega se la cava con grandissima dignità con la musica sinfonica, ma quando inserisco il CD della ECM “Titok” di Ferenc Snetberger (batteria , chitarra e basso) o il CD “Travel Guide” di Ralph Towner (ECM 2013) dove ci sono sia la chitarra classica che quella elettrica, il Rega ovviamente è a suo agio restituendomi quel suono monitor - sebbene un pò arrotondato - che era ed è il mio obiettivo acustico quando ho costruito il mio impianto da scrivania. In sintesi un gran bell’amplificatore, dal suono plastico, naturale, timbricamente corretto, a tratti arrotondato (soprattutto nel registro superiore), con tonalità che si spostano verso il caldo, un palcoscenico largo, ma non profondissimo dove però si colgono con facilità le distanze tra strumenti e tra questi e chi ascolta; ovviamente molto dipende dall’interfacciamento con l’ambiente ed il mio ambiente di ascolto spesso mi ha restituito - con elettroniche e/o diffusori diversi - un suono caldo ed arrotondato ma sempre molto preciso e naturale. Infine, ritengo che qualsiasi descrizione del suono dipenda dalle nostre abitudini e soprattutto dalla qualità delle incisioni, perchè come dicevo ci sono incisioni che fanno fare bella o brutta figura ai nostri impianti.E poi, possiamo discuterne per settimane intere ma il suono non si riesce a descrivere mai fino in fondo per cui consiglio - a chi legge queste brevi note - l’ascolto del CD “Arie italiane per basso” di Ildebrando D’Arcangelo dove, soprattutto nella traccia 9 (“Fra l’ombre e gli Orrori”/Handel/DG 2009) si comprende la bravura del cantante ma soprattutto la capacità dell’impianto di scendere in basso mantenendo una intrigante bellezza sonora di pochi altri dischi dedicati alla “voce di basso”. Al di là di tante altre considerazioni plausibili, la sintesi del discorso dopo 1 mese dall’acquisto è che ricomprerei questo amplificatore consigliatomi dal Signor Ventura dopo qualche chiacchierata via mail; non mi ha deluso, è esattamente - grosso modo - quello che mi aspettavo, ovvero un amplificatore capace di dare corpo ad un suono un po flebile del “Crescendo” e che fa della ricchezza cromatica e naturalezza i suoi punti forza. Difetti? Innanzitutto non ho provato l’ingresso phono MM dell’amplificatore per cui non so dire quanto sia utile per un eventuale ascolto analogico; l’amplificatore è costruito solidamente, è spartano, produce calore per cui consiglio di lasciargli spazio ed aria intorno; gli ingressi sono solo 4 più una entrata phono MM, una uscita tape ed una pre-amp; i terminali di uscita per i diffusori accettano solo banane da 4 mm (ma vanno benissimo con i cavi Tellurium), i connettori RCA d'ingresso risultano troppo ravvicinati; infine non ha la doppia circuitazione dell’Elicit -R ( che costa però 1000 euro in più) ed il telecomando - a voler esser buoni - è veramente “troppo spartano”. Insomma, 1400€ ben spesi, per chi ama la musica.

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