| Authorized
Reprint from
Australian hi-fi
Aug/Sept 2002
B-60R INTEGRATED AMPLIFIER
How many amplifier manufacturers do you think offer 20-year warranties?
One, only one, just one. Bryston.
A Canadian outfit, Bryston has been building amplifiers since 1973
and in all that time has been in the hands of the Russell family-father
and sons. John W. Russell actually started Bryston back in '62,
with two other partners (since bought out) but at that time Bryston
built only medical electronics. Its main product was an aggregometer,
a device that tests the blood's tendency to coagulate.
Chris and Brian Russell set the company on a new course in the
early 70s with the production of first Bryston amplifier (the PRO-3,
precursor to the 3B) which was delivered to a Canadian recording
studio in 1973. Chris still designs at Bryston, aided by Stuart
Tayler, who's been with the company full-time since 1984, though
his links with Bryston go all the 'way back to 1972. Brian Russell
is the President of Bryston.
THE EQUIPMENT
I must admit I discovered my first Bryston amplifier not in a home
hi-fi set-up, but in a recording studio. It was in the late 70s,
and I remember being impressed by the sound from the (of course!)
JBL studio monitors and asking what was being used to drive them.
The mixing engineer gestured to a single rack-mounted Bryston amp
and told me that it was a new Canadian amplifier 'much better than
the Crown', which was saying something, because at the time the
US-made Crown amps were all the rage.
I confess I can't remember which particular Bryston was in the
rack, (it was probably a 3B) seeming only to remember that it was
big and black. That image stuck with me over the years and later
in the early 80s when Bryston equipment began finding its way into
better-quality home hi-fi systems here in Australia, I was taken
by the fact that the styling was essentially identical: Bryston
amps were still big and black.
Nearly thirty years on, I'd like to say things have changed, but
they haven't. Bryston amplifiers are still big and black. Well actually,
it would be more accurate to say Bryston's highpower amplifiers
are still big: monsters like the 4B (250 watts) or 7B (500 watts).
The lower-powered amplifiers, such as this new B-60R, are positively
tiny by comparison. (The external dimensions of the B-60R are 432
x 45 x 267mm [WHD]). What's perhaps most interesting in those figures
is the height, because despite being just 45mm high, the B-60R packs
in two power transformers (toroids, of course!) and claims an output
power of 60-watts into 8-ohm loads and 100watts into 4-ohm loads.
The front panel is nicely but conventionally finished. If you look
carefully, you can see that whoever designed the B-60R liked the
idea of symmetry. Notice particularly that the tape/source switch
at the far left of the front panel is mirrored by the power on/off
at the far right and the 6.5mm headphone socket at the inside left
by the infra-red receiving diode at the inside right. Then, across
the centre of the panel are the large rotary controls for source
selection (CD, Tuner, Video, Auxiliary), Channel Balance and Volume.
As you can see, all four source component options are high-level
inputs. There is no phono stage. Which is not to say you can't option
one in if you want. Bryston has a B60P moving-coil phono stage option
available that sells for $999. There's also a completely separate
phono preamp available, the BP-1.5, which does both moving coil
and moving magnet cartridges. It sells for $3,299.
LISTENING SESSIONS
You'll have to pay some attention to where you put the B-60R, because
the speaker binding posts are built in such a way that the cable
has to come 'up' into them from underneath. So, if you use very
thick, inflexible speaker cable, you may find you can't bend the
cable sharply enough to get it into the fitting. There are any number
of solutions for this, such as drilling holes in your shelf, hanging
the rear of the B60R over the edge of whatever support you use,
right-angle connectors and so on. And, of course, if you don't use
thick, inflexible speaker cable, you won't have a problem at all!
Also, the polarity of the sockets is not 'uniform', so that when
you're looking from the back, the left channel's (+) is to the left
of the (-) terminal, whereas for the right channel, the (+) is to
the right of the (-) channel. In other words, the terminals are
'mirror image', so pay particular attention when you're connecting
your speakers, to make sure you don't accidentally connect one channel
out of phase!
For the record, I really liked the speaker connectors Bryston is
using. They're very solid, accept huge diameter conductors, and
are fully insulated. Even better, the speaker tightening lugs are
large enough that you can get some real torque on them, to ensure
excellent electrical contact. I also liked it that the wires did
exit vertically beneath the connectors, because once you take this
into account, it makes for a really neat, tidy installation, either
in a cabinet or on a shelf.
This isn't the end of the installation process. You also need to
give a little thought to ventilation, because unlike most manufacturers,
which put ventilation holes on the top, Bryston vents the B-60 cabinet
to the edges. First, let me applaud the concept of not putting ventilation
holes (or slots, or whatever) on the top of the amplifier. I find
that amplifiers with these tend to collect huge amounts of dust,
dirt, and grease through these vents, which scums up the circuit
board and the components mounted on it. And, of course, it means
that if someone spills something on the amplifier, the fluid goes
straight inside! Having a sealed top plate, as on the B-60R, means
you never have to worry about spillages, but more important, it
means the inside of your amplifier is going to stay clean-and with
a 20-year guarantee, Bryston has as much of an interest in making
sure your amplifier stays clean as you do! However, it does mean
that you will have to allow a little more room at the sides of the
amplifier than usual, to ensure the heat will dissipate. Even with
adequate ventilation, I found the B60R ran very hot, even though
I was using it in the middle of winter, in an unheated room. (I
should add for the benefit of our overseas subscribers that winters
in Sydney can drop to all of, oh, around 10 degrees Celsius!)
Ergonomically, the amplifier is nice to use, because almost all
the controls have a nice 'feel'. The two that don't are the power
and tape/source switches, which have a rather 'stiff' action, in
my opinion. Normally, I wouldn't make much of this, but since the
Bryston is effectively a 'cost-no-object' design, I would have thought
Bryston could have found switches with a smoother action. (Then
again, it may be that Bryston has elected to go for reliability
over smoothness or that the switch action will become smoother with
repeated use. My review amp was fresh out of the box.)
I have to admit that after using the B-60R for the first week,
I discovered I really wasn't using the remote control to adjust
the volume at all, because once I'd worked out my preferred listening
level, I just left the volume control in the same position. I did
use the mute function on the remote to cut the sound when someone
wanted to interrupt (I mean talk to) me, but that was about it.
Which got me to thinking that if I were paying hard cash for the
Bryston (and after a week, I was thinking about paying hard cash
to buy one for myself), I'm pretty sure I'd save myself a cool $600
by buying the non-remote version of the B60R (known as the B-60),
and using the spare cash to improve my CD collection or add a phono
stage. (At the time I was writing this review, I was forced to buy
some CDs via the Internet-from Amazon-because no local Australian
distributor could get them for me, and I ended paying US$28.76 per
disc [around A$43.00 each!] for CDs that, when they were available
locally, were costing me just $27.60. The old Australian dollar
certainly ain't what it used to be!) I must say that the B-60R remote
is not a thing of beauty, although the square shape does mean you
can stand it up on its end, which makes it easy to locate and use.
If you do use the remote, you can rest assured it works correctly,
in that if the amplifier is muted, and you try to increase the volume
level, the mute switches off, restoring sound. Conversely, you can
reduce volume level using the remote while the mute is engaged.
I was glad Bryston got this right-you'd be surprised how many amplifier/receiver
manufacturers get it wrong!
The fact that the B-60R runs hot has at least one advantage, which
is that warming it up doesn't take long, so you can be confident
all the temperatures of the internal components have stabilized
and you're getting optimum performance within ten or twelve minutes,
if you're setting up for some critical listening. I started listening
with my newly imported discs (see previous paragraph!) simply because
I couldn't wait to hear them. First up was Maurizio Pollini, playing
Robert Schumann and I found myself captivated by the sound, with
the notes just seeming to appear from nowhere, perfectly formed
and at exactly the right time. The sense of the piano's keys being
'sounded' rather than 'played' was very real, and the effect brought
a smile to my lips. Aware that this was not exactly a fair test,
since I had not heard this particular piece played previously (at
least not by Pollini!) I spent a week playing the same CD on three
other systems before re-visiting the Bryston, yet despite my new-found
familiarity with the music, that smile still crept insistently onto
my lips-a smile, I might add that hadn't been there with the other
systems I'd used during the week. What caused the smile? Something
very, very tiny, I suspect.. perhaps it was that sense that perfection
was close by.
Perfection is certainly the word, because by any subjective measure,
the Bryston B-60R's performance was perfect. It was perfectly quiet,
both mechanically (there's no fan, despite the small cabinet size,
nor is there any transformer hum despite there being two closely-mounted
toroids) and electronically (no background hiss, at high or low
volume levels). Power delivery was always instantaneous, with no
perceptible lag, no matter what type of musical program was passing
through. Performance with transients was excellent, and control
over the bass driver was excellent. Play back a kickdrum at high
volume and you can hear this control, but if you actually look at
one of the bass drivers on your speakers, you will be able to see
it as well, with cone motion halted almost straight away. The B-60R
maintains separate musical strands expertly: no matter how much
is going on in the bass, for example, high frequencies still come
through as pure as if nothing else is going on.
It's inevitable that some people, failing anything else to criticize,
will point to the B-60R's sole obvious limitation, being its power
output rating of 60-watts continuous into 8ohms (100-watts continuous
into 4ohms). There may be some truth in this criticism if your home
would be better described as a mansion, and your speakers are both
very inefficient and true 8-ohm types, but few Australian homes
or the speakers in them would fit either description. Most modern
loudspeakers have impedances that hover somewhere between 4 and
6 ohms, average efficiencies of around 89-91dB SPL and operate into
rooms that have a volume of around 400 cubic metres. Under these
conditions, the B-60R is going to deliver ear-shattering (literally)
levels of sound in pretty much any situation. There's a popular
line that Bryston amplifiers actually 'sound louder' than their
rated power figures. I suspect what's actually happening here is
that Bryston's amplifiers sound so clean-and deliver their power
so effortlessly-that people listening to Bryston amplifiers actually
listen at higher levels than they would to any other similarly-powered
amplifier, just because they can!
Which reminds me that I can't possibly conclude this review without
relating a story about the length of the Bryston warranty. I had
a coffee or three with Brian Russell earlier this year and asked
him why Bryston offered such a long warranty period. 'Because we
can!' was his jovial reply, the subtext of which, I assumed, was
that he was well aware that few other amplifier manufacturers could
offer a similar warranty even if they wanted to, and the few that
could, didn't want to. Remember also that Bryston's 20year parts
and labour guarantee is fully transferable between owners, so someone
in the market for a second-hand amplifier could buy a fifteen-year-old
Bryston amplifier and end up with a longer warranty than if they'd
purchased a brand-new amplifier from some other company. The main
problem here would be finding a second-hand Bryston amplifier-they
don't come on the market very often, and are snapped up when they
do.
So why can Bryston offer a warranty others can't match? One reason
is that all Bryston amps are still built entirely by hand, using
very expensive internal components, every one of which is tested
and measured before being soldered into place. So whereas the resistor
in a mass-produced amplifier might cost its manufacturer a cent
or even less, Bryston's resistors probably end up costing more than
a dollar each by the time they eventually get inserted. The downside
of this approach to building an amplifier is that because the average
amp contains several hundred resistors, capacitors, transistors
and other small signal devices, costs escalate rather quickly-which
was obviously a factor when setting the retail price of the B-60R.
 CONCLUSION
I must admit that when the Bryston B-60R arrived at Australian
HI-Fl's offices I wondered if I would be the right person to review
it, simply because I have such a soft spot for the company's products
that readers might see me as being biased towards Bryston. But then
my self-interest got in the way, and I thought to myself 'Why let
one of the magazine's other reviewers have the joy of listening
to it, given that the loaner unit was available only for a fairly
limited time?'. However, later, when it came time to write the review,
I again began to worry about whether readers would perceive me as
being biased, the result of which is that in my efforts to demonstrate
my even-handedness, I may have gone in a bit harder on some aspects
of the B60R's design than it really deserves. So can I conclude
by saying that the B-60R is a superb sounding amplifier, that is
beautifully (and very solidly) built, and that I can guarantee you'll
be proud to own one? I, however, will be opting for the cheaper
B60, without the remote control I need the exercise! greg borrowman
We invite you to experience the Bryston SST2 Series amplifiers
20 Year Warranty - A Generation of Music
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