Imai’s now-$150k TEA-9501 dual-mono phonostage preamplifier (first picture to the left below), his top-of-the-line one-hundred-and-twenty-pound $60k TFA-9501 linestage preamplifier (second picture to the left below), and his $75k eleven-watt-per-channel TM-9502 monoblock power amp, which uses Mr. Indeed, one of the many enticements for going on this trip was the chance to hear Mr. Imai is a doyen of handcrafted tube amplifier and preamplifier designers in Japan. Like William Zane Johnson of Audio Research here in the U.S., Mr. Imai’s friends and clients who own and swear by Audio Tekne equipment. Imai’s son Hironobu, his wife Tomiko, and, as I was soon to discover, an extended family of Mr. Kiyoaki Imai, the extraordinarily gifted designer of all Audio Tekne products, Mr. My first stop (with Yujean and Yvonne Kang of Tangram Audio [ importers and distributors of all Audio Tekne, Technical Brain, and Ikeda products) was the Audio Tekne shop in Hachioji (a suburb of Tokyo), where I met Mr. Judging from what I heard, each of them should be. Ikeda, whose Fidelity Research products were very well known (and well regarded) worldwide in the eighties, none of them is a household name in the U.S. All three of the gentlemen I’m going to introduce you to are master craftsmen of the highest reputation in Japan.
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