Up for sale is a stellar Grommes PHI-26 amp that is just a few months old and in perfect condition. This is a hard-to-get Alan Kimmel design (Modwright, Welborne Labs) that is very well thought out and built. It is point to point construction, made in Chicago. Grommes won top awards for their tube amps in the 60’s and then migrated to professional gear. They make this amp occasionally and only to order.
The PHI-26 offers darn near top-tier performance as 1) a single-ended, Class A EL84 integrated amp (1.8wpc triode/6wpc pentode); 2) a pure sounding, single stage preamp (the “Mu Mode” circuit Kimmel is well known for); 3) a really nice sounding headphone amp. It bested my Yamamoto and Woo WA-6.My intention was to use it as a preamp but its high gain (30db/23db) wasn’t a good match for my amp. If my speakers were more efficient or if I was more of a gear collector there is no way I’d be selling it – it’s way too much fun and good sounding. EL84s were a great choice for this design. If you are looking for a 2 watt integrated, a headphone amp, a high gain preamp, or just want to have some fun with this, I think you’ll be very happy. In all modes except for maybe pentode it puts out sublime, natural music with excellent clarity. Of course, I had to hear it at its best. So I spent $300 for some of the best NOS EL84 tubes, Amperex Holland/Philips, and an NOS RCA black plate 6CG7. These three tubes jumped up the performance quite a bit. You can buy the amp with the stock tubes for $850, or add these for an additional $200. Thanks for your interest.
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