FEZZ AUDIO ALFA LUPI

What they say ...

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LowBeats

Holger Biermann | January 2021

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Fezz Audio DNA - Quality Build & Parts   

" ... And that brings us back to the Fezz Audio Alfa Lupi. Although it is the smallest and the least expensive amp in the range, it - like its bigger brethren - is also equipped with these special Toroidy transformers. A look under the hood is doubly astonishing. As with its big brethren, its workmanship is top-notch, the material quality that is used is high (this one weighs 9.5 kgs !) and the excellent Wima capacitors from Berlin can also be found here. As befits a good tube amplifier: Everything is lovingly hand-wired here. But enough about inner values ​​that you can't see ...

 

""... where there is a will, their is a way ..." 

Extract from HiFi IFAs - November 2018 | Bernd Weber

A special feature of the FEZZ Audio Design DNA is the CRGO (Cold Rolled Grain Oriented) core. The core is used in the output transformer and consists of special steel strips. These are formed cold, and not warm. This, according to the manufacturer, results in a better signal propagation surface and better alignment of the molecules with each other. This similar to the principle of mono-crystalline copper wire, which caused a sensation in the hi-fi sector for a while ... and is also the case with cryogenically treated cables. In essence, the aim here is to positively influence the flow of electrons in the cable by aligning the molecules. FEZZ Audio also uses this design approach for their power transformers.

 

As a rule, the output transformers of tube amplifiers are designed as (square) split ribbon core transformers. In contrast, FEZZ Audio uses a toroidal (round) transformer. These are superior to simpler transformers in terms of stray field and lower intrinsic impedance.

For this very specific reason, this design is very common in power supplies of high-quality power amplifiers.

 

FEZZ Audio has achieved the very wide broadband for its output transformers via a special air gap, which the manufacturer calls Air Gap Toroidal Core Technology (AGTC). The core is cut in an electro-erosion process with high voltage - to put it simply, with pulsating high voltage.

 

The result is a transformer with a very defined air gap, and therefore one that allows for very controllable internal insulation. This positively changes the saturation and power behavior of the transformer - and thus its frequency behavior.

 

The internal balance of the output transformer is optimized by this special process, and is therefore not linearized by internal negative feedback or taps. In a nutshell, this approach is at the core of the FEZZ Audio design philosophy ... An optimized output transformer, from the ground up ... where there is no need for "compensation".

 

"... le petit tube ..."   

Of course, the tubes are clearly visible. The Fezz Audio Alfa Lupi is the only tube amp I know of that uses the cute PCL86 tubes. The PCL 86 is a so-called composite tube. It houses, so to speak, a complete integrated tube circuit: preamp and power amp tubes in one. And it was specially designed for low frequency, and therefore has optimal values ​​of gain and output impedance. Incidentally, the tubes included are Polish-NOS Polams ... and not the usual Russian or Chinese derivatives of well-known brands.

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The Fezz Audio Alfa Lupi works with two PCL86 per channel. These are small, nested marvels that house entire tube circuits in the small glass bulbs. As for wattage yield, the Alfa Lupi's PCL86 tubes work in a push/pull circuit, i.e. one PCL86 is used for each half-wave ...and put out "only"  10 watts per channel. And yet, these 10 watts are still 25% more than the 8 watts that the bigger brother Mira Ceti gets out of its 300B tube.

 

"... le petit set-up ..."

The joy begins as soon as you unpack it : the weight is impressive at almost 10 kilos, and the usual protective grille as well as gloves for installing the tubes are included. Everything is so straightforward that you can't go wrong when setting it up. Not even when plugging in the tubes, for which you only need a little force. Internally, the small Fezz Audio works with an AutoBias : The quiescent current for all four tubes is therefore automatically balanced. If you wanted to change the tubes, that would not be a problem either.

The protective grille and a solid remote control are graciously included in the amps price.

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"... I love you, I love you not ..."

But the most important question for a tube amplifier with only 2 x 10 watts is, of course, which speakers are a good match? There are actually two answers to this question here :

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​Answer # 1

Quite a few speakers. 

We have combined the Fezz Audio Alfa Lupi with a wide variety of "classic" compact speakers with typical efficiency below 85 dB ... from the Harwood LS3/5a to the Dynaudio Contour 20i.

What is important here is an impedance that is as linear as possible, and as high as possible. You then get pretty far in terms of sound.

 

But you can't expect it to go really loud ... please look elsewhere is that is your expectation. Even with the lowest-efficiency speaker from the LowBeats reference shelf, the LS3/5a from Harwood, the sound was not loud, but it was fantastically beautiful.

 

​Answer # 2

Not many speakers at all.

If you are inclined to enjoy heavy hitting dance-club level music, then the list of compatible speakers for the Alfa Lupi becomes thin. We had some success with the Cabasse Minorca MC 40, and The Bora from Cabasse would be even better. But there really are not that many ... still, there are some...

 

As luck would have it, we realized that we had the Heco Harmonie (medium efficiency-90dB) and the Spatial Europe No.5 (quite high efficiency-93dB) in one of our listening rooms. We rolled these in, and with these two speakers driven by the Alfa Lupi the sound was really great, and to our surprise, things actually got surprisingly loud !

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"... lovingly tube-esque ..."

To anyone who has ever wondered why tube sound is so fascinating - the Alfa Lupi will be happy to illuminate you. This small amp shows such wonderfully fine openness and a beautiful radiance that "breathes life" into recordings. It also brings a lot of warmth, structure, and "body" ... especially with singer-songwriter recordings "à la" Stockfisch. 

It has  an aura of "augmented authenticity" that also stretches the depth space further back than any transistor amplifier up to 2,000 euros that I had tested for comparison.

 

"... la conclusion ..."

The somewhat unusual Alfa Lupi tube amplifier lives up to all the positive praise it has been receiving. The comparison to the Fezz Mira Ceti 300B amplifier, which has about the same power, but is significantly more expensive, comes to mind. Of course, the Mira Ceti won in the direct comparison, as the 300B tube brings even more delicacy and warmth. But what still us was that the Alfa Lupi was not that far behind ...  and in the bass it had more slam and sounds a lot crisper.

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Purchase tip of the Week :

A small, charming tube integrated amplifier that proves to be surprisingly practical and copes better with loudspeakers than the technical data would suggest. Its technical stability and surprising control is attributable to its superior transformers, which are a "very rare find" in the Lupi's price range.

 

Unlike the Omega Lupi headphone amplifier, which is almost identical in construction , this little Fezz Integrated has not been covered by the hi-fi press for some completely inexplicable reason. Thus far, only our esteemed colleague Bernd Weber at HiFi-IFAs had already tested the small amp - and "ennobled" it, deservedly, with an almost perfect score.

 

At is price, this small piece of high-end magic is a very attractive proposition, and I fully agree with Bernd's verdict. On second thought, I'll go one better: There isn't a similarly fine sound that is available for less money. At least in terms of sound, I don't know of any alternative in this price range.

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Our comment at Atelier 13 Audio

Constantin Gregg-Saad | February 2023

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"The Fezz Sound"

Considering all of the above, we recalled the observations made by the reviewer of the Fezz Torus 5060, their remarkable $2,250 solid state integrated amplifier. In that review the conclusion was that there was such a thing as a "Fezz Sound" -- regardless of wether tube or solid state -- a sound that is modern, refined, dynamic and extremely musical with all genres. If you take the Fezz Mira Ceti, Silver Luna and Alfa Lupi amps for a real spin, you will definitely hear what the reviewer was talking about.

 

 

"The Fezz Value Proposition"

What is crazy here, is that these things are beautifully built, but are priced to kill ... and they are made in the EU ... not in China ! ... ???

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Thinking the issue through as to why such a price is at all possible to achieve - at least to a certain extent - could be explained by who the people are that are behind the brand ... or rather, who the company is : 

 

It is in fact a well known company, both in Poland and in multiple countries around the world, called Toroidy, a company run by the Lachowski family, by the father Lech and two of his sons, Matthias (Maciej) and Thomas (Tomek).

 

As the name suggests, they are producers of toroidal transformers. It is their power transformers and, for quite some time now, their output speaker transformers (also toroidal!) which are most widely known and respected among both DIY enthusiasts as well as well renowned audio companies.

 

These may be found inside products of companies such as Baltlab, Lampizator, Ancient Audio, Amare Musica, or even Mytek ... so basically in both, very reasonably priced units, as well as in the high-end ones.

 

The company also manufactures enclosures for audio equipment, and in addition thereto, it has its own paint shop. So we think that the emergence of amplifiers that use their company's components ... transformers and enclosures ... components which proved their class when used in products of other brands ... was only a matter of time.

 

For those of us who have the slightest bit of experience with vacuum tube components, it is needless to explain how important a role the output transformer plays in obtaining a high quality of sound.

 

It is for very good reasons that many top global manufacturers wind all their transformers "in-house" ... or, at the least, have them made by dedicated professionals, whilst paying the significant price associated therewith, and suffering from really big subassembly costs.

 

But Fezz Audio does not need to outsource the production of their transformers to anyone, and the idea of building their own amplifiers arose at a time when the product portfolio was extended by a series of very rarely produced speaker output transformers, ones based on toroidal cores. The production of these special cores is extremely difficult, so in spite of the advantages that they offer over traditional transformers, such as a much broader bandwidth, they are generally very rarely used.

 

The Lachowskis decided to take up the challenge and prove that a Polish company can actually make these to very high standard. So, they fiercely jumped into the matter and invented a method of how to properly produce such output transformers, for each and every vacuum tube type.

 

From there, it was only but one small step to "practical application". The more so that they did not need to purchase chassis from other companies, and in addition, because they had their own state of the art paint-shop,  they could afford to offer very attractive, and numerous, color schemes.

... all this without incurring higher production costs.

 

Q.E.D. applies here ... from the latin term "quod erat demonstrandum" = "Which was to be demonstrated" ... or, the proof is in the Fezz Pudding :=))

 

 So, we now have the simple and clear answer to the question as to how is it possible for Fezz Audio to offer such attractive prices given that their production is located in the EU. Essentially, and in a nutshell :

On the essential subassemblies of the amplifier - or at least on some of them - external companies do not make a profit. Coupled with this cost efficiency, Fezz then resists the temptation to add high mark-ups to their cost base ... a temptation not resisted by too many in the High End.

 

There is another saying from a US movie starring Kevin Costner : 
 

" Build it..and they will come"
 

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Its early days ... more reviews to come for sure !

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In the meantime ... take a listen !