Grant Fidelity A534 tube integrated amplifier & CD-327A CD player

I met Ian Grant at this past year’s Rocky Mountain Audio Fest. He and his lovely right hand Rachel Zhang took such pity on me because I had no voice, thanks to a bit of recent surgery. They were incredibly patient and answered all of my questions without the slightest hint of being flustered, despite the fact that they could barely hear me. I had been speaking to them about reviewing some products for my old magazine and when I made the switch to Dagogo they were elated that I was still interested in reviewing their products.

The folks at Grant Fidelity have years and years of experience working with tubes. When I first visited them I was struck by the beauty of the products they were producing, and more importantly, by the quality of sound that I was hearing. After all, what is a pretty face without a stunning personality to go along with it? It turned out that the pretty face was also capable of enticing me with exquisite charm and character. When I found out the price points, my jaw nearly dropped. Here was high quality tube gear at what amounted to very low prices.

They have an interesting offering of integrated tube amps, several solid-state integrated amp, tube CD players, power conditioners, cables and even speakers, not to mention some pretty tricky tube processor for guitarists like me. No, scratch that. They are for guitarists with talent! The company also package full front-end systems at considerable savings. That is the focus of this review. I personally like the one-stop shopping this company affords the audiophile. The great news is that Ian and Rachel have already assembled packages of components that mate well to each other. This saves a lot of heartache and expensive trial and error down the road trying to get a symbiotic relationship going between various components from different manufacturers.

A534 integrated tube amplifier: $1,966

Let’s start with the A534 Integrated amplifier. This is a beautiful piece of engineering, the aesthetics are first-rate all the way. The amp is sizeable and weighs in at 28kgs or roughly 62 lbs. It is not a flyweight by any stretch and the layout makes for a very impressive look at any price. Solid and stout and seemingly carved out of a single block of aluminum, it really catches the eye. The tube compliment takes up the right two thirds of the chassis, and the transformers the left one third. The brushed aluminum looks classy and the matching tube cage adds some safety if you have small little hands or curious animal noses that go poking around your gear. The cage also allows for the unit to vent heat and run relatively cool.

The front panel has controls for the volume, four inputs and a ¼ inch headphone jack. There is also a very large digital display for the input that you are currently using that lights up in red. One suggestion I can offer at this point is to make that display blue. It would add so much to the ambiance the amp provides in a darkened listening room. All in all this is a very handsome unit and compact in size compared to some other integrated tube amps I have seen in my days at 23 in × 19 in × 16 in. It also comes with a very heavy duty remote control that works with great fluidity and feels very good in the hand.

According to the Grant Fidelity website – “The stunning A-534B Integrated Tube amp is a new design with the 300B tubes. With this amp the 300B is finally being used at over 95% of its capabilities, by having EL34's as its driver tube. The A-534B is driving some 85dB efficient speakers if you don’t need to go very loud. Talk to anyone and they will tell you a 300B tube amp usually needs exotic 95dB or better speakers. What this means to you, is that you can finally hear the 'Holy Grail' (300B SET Tubes) of amplification with just about any speaker on the market, again the higher the efficiency the higher the volume.” Grant goes on to say – “The sound? Pure magic, it is everything you could ever want from your amplifier for home audiophile use. All the industry buzzwords are perfectly presented with the A-534B.”

(Editor’s note: per Grant Fidelity, since Gary’s first draft, its website has changed to emphasize to the customer that not all speakers work the same way with the A-534B due to the 300B tube limitations. In addition, part of Gary’s quote above was removed from the website to avoid confusion.)