CJ Premier 11A & CJ 60SE

From tubes to solid state.
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Jazzao1
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CJ Premier 11A & CJ 60SE

Post by Jazzao1 »

Hi all,

I am considering my first foray into CJ amplifiers and looking at the Premier 11A or 60SE amps. It will also be my first tube amplifier as I have been using Plinius amplifiers for the past 10 years.

I can demo the Premier 11A but not the 60SE so I am wondering what are the differences between these 2 CJ amps. The Premier 11A will be using the KT120 tubes the same as the 60SE. The amps will be partnered with a BAT VK3i preamp.

Appreciate any owners who have had experiences between these two amplifiers.

Thanks
Alan
Big Dog RJ
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Re: CJ Premier 11A & CJ 60SE

Post by Big Dog RJ »

G'day Alan,

Sorry for the mighty delay in any reply... seems like no one probably saw your message, in fact it is now close to 5am and I just happened to get home and came across this only now! Oh dear.

Anyway, for what it's worth, here is my 50cts:

Referring to the Prem11A: I have had this amplifier before, infact this was one of my first tube premier amps from CJ, dating back to the late 90's. I also used this amp with Proac speakers, the musicality and depth in soundstage was superb bit that was going quite a way back...
The Prem 11A is also quite an old design, although built on Premier standards, it has a superb sense of musicality, that CJ was known for, lots of caramel effect and that sweet syrupy midrange, that is also rich and lush, plus has the ability to float a soundstage right in front of you. These are the traits of the Prem11A.

Fast fwd several years, this was replaced by the MV60SE, which I also had, that was replaced by the newer LP series amplifiers, such as the LP66s and LP70S, and now these are replaced by the Classic series amps.

All these amps are superb in their own right and come at a fair price, it all depends on what you are willing to spend.
If you want to get the most value out of your expenditure, I would highly recommend the MV60SE. If you want to take that to another level altogether and make use of the KT120 circuit in its purer form, the Classic 60SE is a step above and will perform superbly well in any give top end system.

According to your query, you didn't quite specify which 60SE you were thinking of... is it the MV60SE, LP66SE or Classic 60SE? Perhaps I missed it, not sure but any of these are far superior to the Premier 11A, as they all replaced the Prem11A. Circuits have been designed much simpler, more high quality parts have been utilized, and "SE" versions take the performance to great heights!

That's about all I could say at this stage and have certainly used all these amplifiers at one point in time on various types of systems, more on electrostats though, simply marvelous!
cheers mate,
RJ
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