Sometimes up is up.
When I was a kid, I was a Gumby kinda kid which is to say I was not a Davey and Goliath type. While Art Clokey was behind the scenes molding and modeling the claymation characters in both, the idea of jumping into books was a million times more appealing than faith-based lessons teaching us to respect authority. Yea, my attitude was bad before I hit the first grade.
Which may help explain why I bristle at claims of “The Best” when it comes to damn near anything but especially in hifi where preference holds sway and I don’t need some Blockhead trying to bully me into groupthink measured mediocrity. Harumph!
But a few minutes into Are You Experienced, the first album I bought with my own money some time in the 1970s, and I knew I was hearing a better reproduction of this life-changing record through the Manley Chinook than I’d heard through the other phono stages I’ve reviewed thus far. Sometimes better is just clearly better.
I still remember, like it was this morning, Mitch Mitchell’s rat-a-tat drums sounding sightly hollow, as if he was playing in a heavily damped room of his own, Noel Redding’s big, fat, and full bass, while Jimi was everywhere, skirting from left channel to right to center stage whispering, talking, and singing while his guitar twanged, screamed, jangled, and howled like nothing I’d heard before or since. With the Manley Chinook in between the record and me, Jimi and The Experience were fully formed, fully voiced, and entirely present as plain as day, right there in the air in front of me. It’s as if the Chinook had a better understanding of the workings going on in Are You Experienced, making it more capable of fully reproducing the entire shebang than the other, less expensive phono stages in this mini Phono Stage Survey. The difference between the Manley’s way and even the EAR Studio Phono’s (review) was like the difference between two people explaining thermodynamics where one knows the subject inside and out and the other is a bit fuzzy on the fine points. Savvy?
Once I’d digested The Jimi Hendrix Experience’s three studio albums, in order, and Band of Gypsys as I moved, uncomfortably, through high school, I moved on using Hendrix as my guide. Classic blues and Miles were the next big stops and ‘finding’ In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew felt, at the time, like keys to a larger kingdom well beyond the confines of a suburban development in NJ. Hallelujah. I was also playing guitar by this time, having graduated from the ukulele I found in my grandparent’s closet, so it was natural to explore John McLaughlin and my favorite album of his, by far, was and remains Extrapolation from 1969, his first as a leader. Featuring a relatively restrained McLaughlin playing with searing intensity, John Surman on baritone and soprano saxophones, Brian Odgers on double bass, and Tony Oxley on drums, the smoky club atmosphere of Extrapolation presented another kind of place I wanted to inhabit. With the Chinook in charge, each player was given his full voice, a finely sculpted and distinct place in space and time, as they grooved and moved as one.
The atmosphere here is thick with that late ‘60s genre jumping musical stew, all the richer for McLaughlin’s six-string references to jazz, blues, and flavors from farther East. The changes the Chinook brought to the listening experience can be summed up as a further level of refinement where every aspect of reproduction was brought into better and more finely nuanced focus and emotive beauty.
The Chinook, here a reference to a large, usually red-fleshed, commercially important salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) of the northern Pacific Ocean that is typically bluish-green above with silvery sides, has a dark mouth with black gums, and attains an average weight of about 30 to 40 pounds (13.5 to 18 kilograms) but may sometimes exceed 120 pounds (54 kilograms), also offers a host of gain, resistive, and capacitance choices. From Manley:
- Input Termination Capacitance: 3-position user-selectable capacitor values of 50pF, 100pF, and 200pF yield resultant combinations of: 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, and 350pF. Use these settings typically for Moving Magnet (MM) cartridges.
- Default Input Impedance: 47k Ohms, with no other DIP switches selected. Use this setting typically for Moving Magnet (MM) cartridges.
- Selectable Input Impedance: 5-position user-selectable resistor values of 50, 100, 200, 400, and 800 Ohms. There are 32 possible loading possibilities. Use these resistive loading choices typically for Moving Coil (MC) cartridges.
- Gain: Internal DIP switches select 45dB or 60dB
The Upscale Special Edition, the brainchild of Kevin Deal, Mr. Upscale Audio and executed by EveAnna Manley (yes, that Manley), adds two additional gain settings of 50dB targeting high output MC cartridges, and 65dB for low output cartridges. The SE version also swaps out the Chinook’s stock Electro-Harmonix 6922s with Upscale Audio cryo-treated Gold Lion 6922s that are tested by ear (!) and adds standard black and silver to Manley’s blue (love!) for faceplate options. Single-ended ins and outs, chassis ground, and IEC inlet complete the rear end.
From Manley:
Like the Steelhead, each channel employs the two triode sections of a 6922 for amplifying duties with highly accurate passive RIAA equalization networks. In the Chinook, the signal is then directly coupled to another 6922 dual triode serving as the output driver in a White Follower configuration. This output stage circuit is our favorite because of its super-low output impedance and beefy current-driving capabilities. It can drive long cable lengths and difficult loads, tube or solid-state. Bring it on. No wimpy cathode followers here!
It’s safe to say that the Manley Steelhead, released in 2001, is a stone cold hifi classic and the Chinook, which uses the same clean and quiet audio circuit design, appears to belong on that list as well.
As you can see, the sides and top are dressed in black metal mesh to let the heat out, while the recessed company logo and model name light up when power is on and sit above the blue lit on/off button on the otherwise unadorned aluminum faceplate. The Chinook resided on the Box Furniture ‘Fallen A’ rack in the same system used for every previous phono stage review which is comprised of the Michell Gyro SE ‘table/Michell TA8 tonearm/Ortofon 2M Black MM cartridge, Leben CS600X integrated amp, and DeVore O/96 speakers with cabling from AudioQuest.
It’s worth noting that Manley Labs also has one leg firmly planted in the Pro Audio world, and it seems to me that this stance can help ground the hifi side to a price/performance ratio that leans heavily on performance.
Of all the tired reviewer tropes I’m tired of, the tube caveat is right near the top. “Exceptionally detailed for a tube amp.” “Surprisingly quiet for a tube-based design.” And so on. It’s just as bad as being surprised by “the ample bass from such a small speaker!” or an “analog-sounding DAC!”
Imagine you’re at a party chatting with people you’ve just met and one of them says, “You know, for an American you’re not that stupid.” Sure, I’ve met my fair share of stupid people and I’m as American as pizza pie every Friday, but to assume every American is stupid just because they’re American is what we call a gross or faulty generalization. A conclusion about all things based on just a few of those things. Which is all to say that tube-based electronics are not inherently noisy and the Manley Chinook is surprisingly quiet for a tube based design (wink).
If Ray and Charles Eames sat in their red Eames LCW chair in the Barn listening to IDLES Ultra Mono they would rejig the design to include seat belts.
Here’s part of the message from the band in the album’s liner notes:
Each song soon became a battering ram of I. The album is a big fuck off ox that carries us through the sludge and doubt of back-handed fuckery, delivering us to all that we love: us/we/you.
Are these guys from Jersey?
From the opening assault of Jon Beavis’ drums sending anger waves deep into the Barn’s recesses, Ultra Mono is a relentless high energy attack and the Chinook danced right along, delivering every last ounce of piss and vinegar in Joe Talbot’s spitting mad vocals, with guitarists Mark Bowen and Lee Kiernan screeching and churning with angular bpm angst, while Adam Devonshire’s freight train bass propels the entire eye of the storm forward, always forward. Scintillatingly exhausting. Superb control from bass to blistering guitar howls, Ultra Mono aided by the Manley’s crystal clarity and muscular ultra control turned this music into pure adrenaline like some mad sonic triple expresso on steroids.
I have a sneaking suspicion that New Zealand’s Aldous Harding has a different way with anger, covering it with a quieter cloak. I had the great pleasure of seeing her live in a tiny Chicago club, the show coinciding with Axpona 2019, and her stage presence—I was few feet away as pictured—was kinda scary in the best possible way.
Warm Chris is her latest album, released last year on 4AD, and it is as intricate, delicate, and enticing as a lesser flamingo fawning in front of a leopard. Harding’s voice is her main instrument and she can make it sound every which way—tight and shrill, warm and inviting, with a few odd characters in between—and the backing band is super tight, keeping pace with the hair-pin twists and turns each song takes. The Chinook presented this lovely amalgam of sounds with exquisite dexterity, adding to the tension Harding creates with phrasing, timing, and attitude. There’s something a bit creepy about this music, and I mean that as a high compliment, something subtly and slightly off-putting in an endearing way that lurks deep in nuance and the Chinook revealed these micro-moments like a pro.
I’m going to finish my album play-by-play with a return to Martha Argerich’s Bach and simply say that with the Manley Chinook I was better able to hear into her performance with a combined sense of heightened timing-based tension and a richer, fuller and better controlled timbral palette as compared to the EAR Studio Phono. To be fair, the Chinook’s sonic one-upmanship also adds about $600 on top of the price of the EAR, which may or may not be a budget deal breaker. If I had the scratch hiding in the depths of a sofa or two, the Manley Chinook would be mine and mine alone (well, this one). If we also take into account its adaptability courtesy of a boat load of cartridge matching options, we have one extremely compelling package. A one and done kinda deal to my way of thinking.
Listening to music on the hifi is not mysterious. If we quiet down, internal and external noise, our bodies can tell us all we need to know. Listening to my system with the Manley Chinook as part of it offered the deepest, most moving, and fastest track yet into a one-on-one communion with the cherished songs, sounds, stories, and moods laying in wait in records, slivers of magic that can change the course of our lives if we let them in.
Sometimes better is just clearly better.
Manley Labs Chinook Special Edition MkII Phono Preamplifier
Price: $3199
Company Website: Manley Labs
Company Website: Upscale Audio
Specifications
Vacuum-tube complement: 2 x 6922 x 2 (gain stage), 2 x 6922 (output stage). Any 6DJ8, 7308, ECC88 types may be used
Input termination capacitance (MM/MC): 50, 100, 150, 200, 250, 300, and 350 pF
Moving magnet input impedance: 47k ohm
Moving coil (MC) input impedance: 5-position user-selectable resistor values of 50, 100, 200, 400, and 800 ohm offering 32 loading options
Gain: 45, 50, 60, 65 dB
Output impedance: 91 ohm
Minimum recommended load: 2500 ohm
Internal power supply: Fully regulated linear B+, Heater, and control voltage rails.
Fuse: 500mA SLO-BLO size 5mm x 20mm
Standby transformer fuse: 10mA, SLO-BLO, MDL type size 1/4″ x 1 1/4″
Dimensions (WHD): 17″ x 3.5″ x 11″