Hegel Music Systems are celebrating their 10th anniversary with the release of two new pieces of audiophile high-class audio technology in the bodies of the P10 preamplifier and the H10 power amplifier. Now, it's obvious where the "10" in their names comes from; yet, the looks of these two new gadgets are nothing new – even more, it seems that Hegel pushed the limits of simplicity even further, trying to achieve shapes as simple and beautiful as possible.

If you're after audio gear that's got more looks than features, maybe you should not be looking for the anniversary Hegel stuff; but if the spartan design combined with the striking audio quality is your goal, then the P10 and H10 may be what you need.

The P10 is a preamp like few others are as we're talking about some shocking statistics here. Not only is this preamp one of the "purest" ones as far as the signal path is concerned but it is one of the audio tools for whose manufacturing a lot more efforts have been made than in the case of other similar products. And that's because the Hegel P10 sports only two FET transistors and two resistors in the signal path.

Now, how about testing 100 transistors for each H10 unit? If you've already raised an eyebrow, be prepared to raise the other one, too, as for the first batch of 300 H10s, Hegel tested no less than 30,000 transistors for the perfect match in order to eliminate the higher-order harmonic distortions and create a zero feedback amp close to perfect purity. The H10 power amp can deliver 2 x 300W in 8 Ohms and a wall-shaking 2 x 1000W power blast in 2 Ohm impedance, which is probably more than your house can stand, by the way.

Finally, the "may" we introduced at the end of the second paragraph was no figure of speech: these anniversary Hegel toys are definitely some nifty things to long for, but their price is the main reason for "may." Because if you feel like getting your hands on them, you may have to fork out some $9,000 for the H10 and $6,000 for the P10. And that may be "a tad" more than what you saved for your Christmas list.


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