JVC A-X9
(1979 - 1982)

A true rarity and a lavish example of structured design, too.
I must admit I bought my A-X9 mainly for its design, never having seen one then, let alone more recently. And not only is the A-X9 very well designed, but it also is a very hot and able music maker !

The A-X9 is a sibling of the very successful PL-10, M-L10 and M-7050 and in fact came first in the lineup - so no Gm processors yet (as such - but I believe the volume control of the A-X9 to have been engineered in the same way as the patent for the Gm still was pending in '79) and no... feather-touch buttons!
At 158,000¥, the A-X9 wasn't exactly high-end (by japanese standards) but nevertheless packed with goodies only the vanishing 1970s could provide at such low price points. First is the non-switching Super A circuit, a big 380VA toroidal transformer with windings for each stage to be fed, special EL FETs, relays for the loudspeaker outputs, a complete set of trims for the phono inputs, copper bus bars, DC & Class A preamp and EQ stages, near zero distortion and zero TIM - and then some. Strangely, thebalance function is always active, even when the "tone off" switch is engaged...
As the original catalog I have isn't yet translated to english, I'll leave that at that for the moment.

Build-quality-wise, this is all steel, with plenty of room to breathe. As idling current is to be set at 50mV for each channel, Super A, if not regular Class A, produces a fair amount of heat just the same.

The front is a massive 4mm extruded aluminium piece cut in two to make the bottom lid and folded to form the top. The "display" is a semi-reflective metallic strip that hides the unselected functions but lets the lit selected ones pass through - strikingly elegant, very effective and carried on the later P-L10 bestseller.
The slightly frosted aluminium, shiny vertical selectors and mirror strip make for a finely detailed, well-proportioned and near-Sony finish quality. The image above doesn't show it as it is: you'd normally only see "MM" lit and all other words should be almost invisible. Only the well-matched but fairly banal casing and the push-buttons are a bit of a let-down but so what ? The sensual feel of the big volume control makes up for those. And the sound, of course.

Sound-wise... well... this big 17kg A-X9 is now my main integrated music-maker and it will keep that position for a long, long time: strain-free, stable stereo image at all levels, lots of power and not a trace of distortion in sight.