Sonneteer Campion

Pretty impressed with the external build quality btw.
Simple and rugged. High quality connectors and knobs. No-nonsense.
 
You should be as the Campion sounds mighty good with those Spendor A6's!
I'll sit back for a while, I've lost enough money on amps lately, in my crazed state:D. I am finally able to actually buy some physical media again (CD) to play on the Marantz CD6005. The Naim has finally settled in and is making me grin again.

Pretty impressed with the external build quality btw.
Simple and rugged. High quality connectors and knobs. No-nonsense.
I'm watching you:D. The Campion is a fine looking piece of gear:thmbsp: So what speakers are you listening to now David? Man I thought those KEFs were gonna be with you permanently. From what I remember of selling those as a "young hifi salesman" they needed a boat load of power to sound their best.

Art, you and I were either listening to too much music or David was holding out on us AK brothers. I did NOT see the Sonneteer coming.:scratch2:
 
It was a bit of an impulse buy, and I don't regret it.
I was a little skeptical that it would be much of an improvement.
So far, it looks like it.

I plan to use this amp for my office desktop setup for a while.
This means the Campo will be driving the Celestion SLs.
The SLs are known to be notoriously inefficient, but the Campo's doing a fab job.
So far they're a bit of a match made in heaven :beatnik:

Ya know the funny thing about the KEFs was that I liked it best mated with my SET as long as the volume doesn't hit a tutti....:smoke:

Anyway the Campo runs pretty warm. It's not Class-A, though I'd have thought.
 
A few Qs:

1. Is the Campo discontinued? I don't see it listed on Sonneteer web. If so, when was it discontinued?

2. Has it always been one uniform model? Looks like the Campo's been around for quite a while.

3. If they have had a few different tweaks over the years, how do I tell where mine belongs to?
 
1. Is the Campo discontinued? I don't see it listed on Sonneteer web. If so, when was it discontinued?
Yes, the Campion is discontinued unfortunately.
I got my Campion in may 2013. A few months later it was discontinued.

2. Has it always been one uniform model? Looks like the Campo's been around for quite a while.
Yes, the Campion has been around for almost 20 years! :yes:
(quite an achievement for any manufacterer, to build up their succes on one product. (or two, the Alabaster included)
I don't know in what year, but visually the Campion later got the same, thicker frontplate as the Alabaster. (now 5mm thick, 3mm in the past)

3. If they have had a few different tweaks over the years, how do I tell where mine belongs to?
I'm confident an email to Sonneteer. with the serial nr of your Campion, will answer your question.
You can check if it's from the mid 90's to fairly recent* though. (*= say less than about 10 years old)
If you have red and black loudspeaker terminals on the back of your amp, than you have one of the older models.
The later ones have more luxurious, (WBT-like) transparent ls-terminals.

So, if your Campion looks like this on the back, it's one of the earlier models:

campion2.jpg


Here's a more recent model of the Campion. (mine looks like this)
469457-sonneteer_alabaster_integrated_amplifier.jpg
 
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Thanks Baldo. Will check the serial number when I get to work.
The terminals were single, transparent ones :banana:
 
Mine is a v1 Campion from 2002. It sat at the distributors for a number of years before being bought. Kind of NOS when it was bought by Oscar, the first owner. Sounds fantastic and looks great even with the 3mm faceplate.
 
Mine seems to be 5mm. Agreed it sounds great.

I was a little appalled that I actually looked forward to coming to work :beatnik:
 
You don't see them often used but there is one now on the Canuck site. Too bad I have 5 integrated amps already.
 
Really.....well, I would have to keep the Orton (man cave), Marantz (living, great room HT), Rega BrioR (bed) so that leaves the wifes den old Onix OA21s. I am less attatched to it by now but I just made it a set by getting the matching tuner BWD1.
 
Think you can safely replace the Rega with the Campo :beatnik:

Sent from my X10a using Tapatalk 2

The BrioR, with Apollo cdp is probably overkill for the bedroom where we play 1 cd every night at bedtime, then sleep. Actually just about perfect.
I am sure I would enjoy the Campion as well but then I have to sell the Rega which may not move so fast.
I did manage to resist jumping on the 2 Alabaster amps that were sold on the same site used last year.

I do sometimes use her den because my 'man cave' must double as the guest room because it is private whereas her den is part of her bed, bath and den suite. I actually have been thinking of changing that den Onix set to a basic cheap AVR setup instead.
 
Been using an Audioquest power cord on the Campo.
Now that's ceded to my main rig, I felt like swapping some cables.

So, replacing the regular spaghetti cords between the Campo and my uDac, I brought some entry QED ICs from home. I quite like this cable.
The build is very sturdy and the connectors have such firm grip, and it's in sexy Ferrari red :beatnik:

When used between the pre amp and my TPA power, the sonic improvement was sorta noticeable over the spaghetti cords.

qed_zpsrel8qpox.jpg
 
Been using an Audioquest power cord on the Campo.
Now that's ceded to my main rig, I felt like swapping some cables.

So, replacing the regular spaghetti cords between the Campo and my uDac, I brought some entry QED ICs from home. I quite like this cable.
The build is very sturdy and the connectors have such firm grip, and it's in sexy Ferrari red :beatnik:

When used between the pre amp and my TPA power, the sonic improvement was sorta noticeable over the spaghetti cords.

qed_zpsrel8qpox.jpg

:thmbsp:
 
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