Fidelity Research FR-64x

Chakster, You have to acquire something uses tubes for gain. Then you have to say here how much better it sounds than your SS stuff, just to piss off Raul. Seriously, Nelson Pass is one of the greats in modern audio design; I have long had curiosity about his First Watt products, but none of those amplifiers were powerful enough to run my Sound Lab speakers.  However, about 3 years ago, I made some major changes to the speakers that have dramatically increased their efficiency.

@lewm

Nelson Pass is one of the greats in modern audio design; I have long had curiosity about his First Watt products, but none of those amplifiers were powerful enough to run my Sound Lab speakers.

My situation is totally different, his F2J current source power amp was designed only for full range drivers and with my 101db Zu Audio Druid i have so much power that i use only10-20% of the volume control on First Watt B1 passive preamp. F2J has only 5 watt at 8 ohm, but my speakers are 16 ohm, so i think i have only 3-4 watts power with them. It’s nice to realize that with my speakers i can live with 3 watts or even lower. Class A circuits (no feedback), he made only 100 units.

@sampsa55

Good to hear you’re enjoying it. Have you tried other cartridges? How do you like it compared to other tonearms?

I think it’s a great combination, what i’ve noticed is the Stevenson alignment of FR-7f on FR-64fx tonearm when i set up pivot to spindle distance with Feickert protracktor on my LUX 444. I’m gonna play with it for a few weeks, then i’m gonna swap my FR-7f with Ortofon SPU Royal G mkII with Replicant 100, they are almost identical in settings of the arm. But i can not use any lighter carts on my FR-64fx, because i have one one counterweight (w-250) designed for superheavy cartridges (30-32g). I think i prefer this FR tonearm compared to Lustre GST-801 which was also very good.

Last night i decided to remove Luxman SUT and ZYX Headamp from the chain and connected FR-7f directly to my JLTi phono stage. I enjoyed the quality and with this combo i can turn the volume up a bit on my passive pre, i think my ex low power tube push-pull amp was not right for this combo. So with First Watt gear i can use very low output cartridges without thinking of the volume pot (when it was too high on tube amp).

I realized 1000k ohm loading was more pleasant for FR-7f than 100 Ohm or 47k Ohm. But i need more time to play with it.

@nandric 

The conclusion of them both was , in short, that FR-64 FX is a '' poor man FR-64 S ''.

poor me :)) 
appart from this review we know nothing about comparison between two models, beside the fact that FX is more flexible in term of effective mass and can be lighter when needed (but still can accommodate FR-7f or SPU).