the t.amp S-75 MK II

I bought my original t.amp S-75 Mk II way back in September 2013 and through a series of events my studio wasn't ready so that I could install it until April 2014. Sure enough, April came and I cracked open the box, mounted it into the rack, wired it all up and switched it on. Worked a treat right away.

After my initial, brief testing, I turned it off and carried on wiring other parts of the studio. Around half an hour later I turned the unit back on to test another bit of equipment and the power light turned from green to red after a minute or so. At the same time a relay-like "click" came from the unit.

I thought I must have overloaded it it or something (even though I knew I couldn't possibly have) so I turned it off, put all the levels down to zero and turned it back on again. This time the power light stayed perpetually red. No green light at all.

I went through a process of unplugging everything, waiting 3 minutes, turning everything back on and off again but nada, zilch, nothing. It seemed the unit was dead, so I left it and went for some food.

A few hours later I came back and switched it on again and to my surprise the green light came on again and all worked as before. Hurrah! Except, after a few minutes the same red light of death appeared and that was the end of that. Again.

I contacted Thomann and they immediately sent out a replacement once I'd returned the damaged one - free of charge - and it was all sorted within a week.

I have no idea what went wrong initially but the replacement is a-ok. Had I have bought this from another vendor I probably would have had to fight to get a replacement sent out after 7 months but I have to hand it to Thomann, their after-sales service is simply spot on - which is one of the reasons I keep coming back time and time again to them even if it does take a little longer to arrive to the UK from Germany than a UK-based shop.

As for the new amp, well, it's a great little unit and plenty loud enough for a small studio. I'm running it into JBL Control 1's as they're so unforgiving to mix with and the combination works well. My only slight gripe is that because it has a real transformer - and not a switch-mode power supply (and the reason why the amp is so heavy for its size), it does exhibit a slight 50Hz mains hum. It's not bad, don't get me wrong, but if you're planning on mounting this onto a desk rack and mix quietly, then the hum could transfer into your desk and hence be amplified and become an audible problem. So, if you are going to desk mount it I'd stick some absorbing rubber underneath the desk rack to prevent this.

Oh, and it's built like a tank. I expect this will outlive every other item in the studio.

First of all, I would like to apologize for my poor English.
I ordered it from Japan. It arrived very quickly, but I had a problem with UPS. So I consulted with the customer center here.
They were very polite and helpful, even with my poor English.
I was worried about how to deal with overseas mail order, but I am really glad I bought it here. Anyway, if you have any problems, I think it's a good idea to consult with them. They were very busy, but they responded sincerely.

Now for the product review.
First of all, the price is amazing.
And the sturdiness of the product is amazing.
As for the important sound, I've tried many amplifiers in various price ranges.
To be honest, for the price, I was willing to take the chance of failure.

But the moment I turned it on and heard the music, I had to find out if the price was right.

There was no mistaking the price.

The sound was flat and without any weird flavoring.

I have a DJ mixer plugged in as a preamp to deal with the only drawback of this amp, which is the single input jack.

This gives me a nice flat sound from my CDs, PC, and turntables.

Anyway, I can confidently recommend it to anyone, whether you are a first-time buyer overseas, an enthusiast who has experienced expensive amplifiers, or someone on a limited budget.

This is because of the products, of course, but also because of the wonderful staff who can help you with many things.

Thanks for everything.

I might buy motu m2 from here in the near future.

I have an S-75 for studio monitoring and an S-100 in my small portable DJ rig. For studio monitoring purposes it is particularly important to avoid the noise of a fan. Be aware though that it does mean these have to be well ventilated. You'll need to leave space in the rack top and bottom if you want to use these to their full capacity. The thermal protection will operate before you get into the realms of distortion - which is no bad thing, just remember it's there.
The sound is pure and uncoloured, and the power delivery adequate for near field monitoring. The thermal protection issue only raises its head after prolonged listening to bass-heavy material (at levels where you can feel the draught from the woofers on your face!).
Thankfully with this generation you can turn off the standby function, where the unit shuts down when a signal level threshold is not breached for a period of time.
Connectors are all good solid industry standard types, and the general construction is no-frills but functional - like you'd expect from a professional piece of kit.

I'm using this power amp to drive my trusty old Tannoy Reveal passive monitors and it's more than adequate for the job.

When it arrived one of the rack ears was bent back, but the nice people at Thomann offered a discount if I was happy to keep the amp. There was no visible damage to the finish so it was likely caused by something heavy pinning the metal back rather than impact damage. Thankfully everything works fine and I managed to bend the rack ear back pretty much straight.

The only feature I would have liked is a stereo link so the 2 channels can be controlled by a single volume control. But the manual recommends having both channels turned up full anyway so it was just a case of getting used to controlling the volume from my interface software.

The standby mode sometimes kicks in when quiet audio is being played, if it's quiet enough not to register on the meters then it will just turn itself off after 15 minutes. You can disable the standby feature though if it becomes an issue.

The fanless design is a great plus point for keeping studio noise to a minimum, and the 1U rack size is very convenient.

Overall very happy with this buy.

Essentially a well built, quiet-running, good-sounding amp.

However, I bought it to use in a theatre context to power a pair of JBL Control 1s. While it's capable of doing this, it has an in-built power-saving feature, whereby it turns itself off after 5 minutes of little to no signal. It then takes about 5 - 10 seconds to turn back on again once it registers signal. While I understand later generations will have the ability to turn this feature off, at the moment this can't be bypassed. Unfortunately for my purposes this renders it unusable.

So, I'm sure for other applications it's perfectly good, just not for theatre!