Nirvana Electronic Works NEW A-60 Amplifier.WOOW


I need to tell you about this amp. I will be bragging more than anything else about how good it is. The company is long out of business. This is partially why this amp is an absolute steal for the $. If you can get one for under $500.00, which is a common asking price, beg, borrow or steal and get buy as fast as you can. Alot, make that, most people have no clue what this amp is and don't care to find out. Their loss your gain!! For those of you who don't know, here's a little background. Nelson Pass designed it. Mysteriously enough, it is shaped like a Threshold T-50. It is quite hefty like the Threshold beasts as well. It betters the Threshold amps by providing gold plated metal binding posts!! I have owned this amp for one day and am astounded at how good it is. I bought it from a guy in Victoria, Canada. I am in Massachusetts. It took 3 weeks for me to receive it by the postal system. That is how far Victoria, Canada is from me(approx. 3,000 miles). Anyway, it was well worth the wait. The amp is an NOS unit. Brand new, thank you. According to the 2 page owners manual, the amp was broken in at the factory. They suggest it will improve over the first 250 hours of use. Boy, if it does, I am going to be in audio heaven!! I listened to it yesterday for about 4 hours. Right off the bat, it was killer. Everything was so much more alive with this amp. Mind you. The factory states that it is a high bias class A amp with 60 wpc into 8 ohms and 120 into 4 ohms. My system is as follows. I just bought a Philly Audio 7A tube preamp. I have an ADS CD4 cd player. My analog rig is a fully blown Linn LP12 and Koetsu Red moving coil feeding a Benz Micro Lukashek PP1 phono preamp. The speakers I use are Green Mountain Audio Europas. I use Signal Cable power cords, speaker cable and Audio Magic Excaliber 2 interconencts. The speakers are fairly new and not broken in as of yet. They only have 50-60 hours on them. The preamp is also new. It has the same 4 hours of use as the amp. Regardless of how new, power up and first listen proved to be magical!! I couldn't believe the system synergy. It was breathtaking! That was just with digital. I switched to analog. Holy crap!!!!!! I am a rock and roll freak. I put on Van Halen's first album. Ice Cream Man is my favorite tune on that lp. Boy oh boy when Roth got going it was better than sex. Don't tell my wie. The A-60 can f***in' rock and roll unlike any amp I have owned in the past except maybe the Threshold T-100. It is fast, articulate, sweet and has tons, I mean tons of control in the bass and 10 times more power than I thought. I honestly thought by the time I turned the album over and and was half way thru "Running with the Devil", that the Europas were going to PUKE. The power that I was subjecting the tweeters to was frightening!!!! I must say that the power is extremely clean. The amp showed no sign of giving up. My ears would have given up first. That is when I had to back off the volume. Next, came the band Toto. I have a demo copy of 4 songs from the Toto 1V album. Rosanna, Africa, I Won't Hold You Back and Waiting for Your Love, in that order 2 songs per side. The first 3 songs were unbelievable. The 4th tune started and I almost fell over. This song, I don't know if it was a better recording than the first 3 songs or what but it was the most perfect sounding recording I have heard. The bass slam, who says a Linn doesn't have bass, there was so much slam my jaw was on the floor!! Anyway, that's my 2 cents. Respond with any questions or comments.

Thanks for reading.
Jeff
128x128jfrizzell49
Sounds like you are really having alot of fun! That's what it is all about. Enjoy!
I don't believe the amp was designed by Nelson Pass. According to Nelson the design for the smaller NEW amps was taken from his DIY designs and used w/o permission. I've read that the larger amps (DCA-66 and presumably the AC powered A-60) were designed by someone else (possibly owner Mitch Friedman). Take care of it...getting it fixed won't be easy ( I speak from experience)
Hello, way to go on getting an A-60. You are right. Most people don't know what a "NEW" is...uh.. was. I have an A-20 and love it to all high heaven. I keep it simple. Just running my Sony XA7ES direct to it and the NEW driving my Magnepans. It is way cool how these amps sound. Too bad NEW didn't make it. They had the right idea, and horrible marketing tactics. A company in Santa Ana California which made of allot of the solid state NEW like mine called TIBI manufacturing maybe the place to you need to talk to should your NEW give you any difficulties. Enjoy your A-60 sincerely,Vincent.
Hey, don't you guys know that tube amps are just great big distortion machines?!? Oops, sorry, this is SS - got it confused with their pre-amp.

Eric Idle
Hi Jeff.We both have same preferences in music.Van Halen is great so is Toto.Enjoy your amp.I remember the N.E.W ads on Stereophile.
Happy listening
George
Hi Jeff,

It has been a few months since you posted your initial response on this amp; how do you like it so far?

I am interested in purchasing one "used", can you share your experience again after owning this "magic" for more than 6 months now. Do you have any reviews or write-up about this amp from any other source? Any problem so far, just wonder?

I would deeply appreciated if you will give me the lead or contact as to where you purchased this uint from.

Thanks,
King (Pioneer48)
From Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Hey Jfrizzell49, I just purchased this N.E.W. A-60 power amp from a local eBay seller in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Well, at least it won't have to travel 3000 miles like you mentioned on your 05-06-2004 posting; but it's worth the wait/travel though!!
This amp is almost new, cosmetic is 9.5/10; and it sound amazing, excellent focus/image/sound stage!! I don't know what happen to this company N.E.W., where are they now? This amp comes with original double box but no manual.
I would deeply appreciate if somebody can email/mail/sell me a copy of the manual, for my reference only. Is there is any site that I can download this manual from?
Again, this amp is MAGIC!!
a little addition for all of you n.e.w. fans, as i am one my self. i have owned every piece that n.e.w. ever marketed, including the lp-1 phono stage & their octal tube cd player.
brooks is correct. the original n.e.w. amp was the a-20, and it was indeed a ripoff of the zenmaster's work, but that's mitch friedman for you. the a-20.1 was assembled at tibi electronics, with various components outsourced. i don't know who mitch had make the a-20.1 pcb, my eyes aren't good enough to make out the stamp on the board.
as for the a-60, this amp is actually 2 a-20.1 pcb's per channel. each a-60 channel has 1 fully stuffed pcb & 1 pcb only stuffed with output stage components. the two a-20.1 pcbs are bridged together at the inputs to the output stages. also, the a-60 has a larger torroid, both in size & output volts supplied to the + & - rails,also with dual windings (one for each channel) . this allows for the 2 a-20.1 ciuruts per channel to be biased at a higher value without dragging too much transformer hum in to the audio.
this also causes the a-60 to run hotter than the a-20, even though they are the same circuits ,hence, the larger heatsink surface area.
the n.e.w. a-60 was manufactured by cary audio, as well as the n.e.w. p-3 tube preamp. it is unclear to me who thought of the idea of taking 2 a-20.1's and making them into an a-60. sounds again like mitch friedman, but hey, it worked like a som'bitch. the only thing 'old' about the n.e.w. a-60 are the a-20.1 pcb's inside it.
cary audio labs will presently service any n.e.w. product as they obviously know the circuits inside & out.
kirk is the man to contact at cary.
happy listening......

p.s. my system
kuzma stabi s 'table
kuzma stogi s 'arm
benz glider h/o
graham slee era v phono stage
arcam fmj dvd 27 a dvd/cdp
highly modified n.e.w. p-3 pre (by yours truly)
highly modified threshold s200 stasis/e amp
note: only using above amp while i am converting 2 a-
20.1's in to a-60 custom monoblocks (by yours truly)
cabasse brick 500 speakers
siltech interconnects
cardas speaker cables
How can I get one ? I have never seen a ad for their products used. Any help woud be great
I have 2 N.E.W. A20s. Paid $698.00 apice for them in 1994. I own a Pass Labs INT-150, XP Preamp, other recent Pass Labs amplifiers, Wyred 4 Sound amps, Rogue Monoblocks, Coincident Amp, and others. I prefer the A20s.
The NEW A 60 is amazing!! I know for a fact to clarify the truth that Nelson Pass, Ted Bennet and Mitch Friedman were the original partners in NEW. for the A20. The design was given by Nelson, Ted manufactured it and Mitch did the sales and marketing.
The other products were some of the best values audio has ever seen!!

Enjoy
This is so strange. I’ve been trying to track down the history of N.E.W. for a while now. Multiple sources say Pass wasn’t involved and a few sources are certain Pass was involved, but for some reason he isn’t stepping up and taking credit. If true, why would Nelson stay “off-grid” with these amplifiers? Perhaps he was on contract with someone and doesn’t want it to get out that he was working with someone else? Just a thought. I don’t get it.
Just to clarify: I don’t mean to attribute malice to Nelson. I’m sure he’s a good, moral person. Just spitballing ideas. Assuming he did play a hand in the design, why not take credit? The N.E.W. amps get rave reviews!
Good info. I hadn’t seen that first link:

“I gave Mitch Freidman permission to use the design, but found my generosity abused, and I spent a lot of time disassociating myself from N.E.W.”