Hegel V10 Review
Without pomp and frills – High-quality music playback is appreciated throughout Scandinavia. Although the Norwegian manufacturer Hegel has been on the market for 30 years now, it is still considered an insider tip in this country. The brand new V10 phono stage has what it takes to change that – an exclusive test by 7Review.
by Michael Lang
With integrated amplifiers, preamps, and power amps, the Norwegians have already earned an excellent reputation over a long period. But now, after about 30 years, they venture for the first time onto the thin ice of phono amplification – that is, the art of equalizing and amplifying the extremely weak signals from cartridges as much as possible without any impairments, so that the input of a preamp or integrated amplifier designed for higher levels can be driven.
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What initially reads quite simply is, when you want to implement it well and consistently, a course strewn with numerous stumbling blocks. Company founder Bent Holter and his team also experienced this when they began sketching the first designs. The basic idea was not to reinvent the wheel, but to offer analog fans an above-average phono preamplifier at a moderate price.
But very soon it turned out that the team took a liking to the seemingly routine task and each new idea introduced practically challenged the next addition until they finally had a coherent overall concept.
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Independently Designed
From a technical point of view, this includes a channel-separated, discrete design with high-quality components, a circuit of four parallel-connected JFETs in the input stage to keep noise and distortion at the lowest possible technical level even with low-output MC systems. The power supply was outsourced; it has separate feeds for the left and right channels. It was also important for the Norsemen to give the device high flexibility—which had the consequence that the design was not only for MM and MC systems but also provided a channel-separated DIP switch on the back, allowing the gain factor, capacitance, and load resistance to be adjusted over a wide range to match the cartridge used. Additionally, a subsonic filter can be switched on to filter out low-frequency interference. The automatic power-saving function switches off the device after 15 minutes without signal. It can be deactivated by pressing the front switch for a few seconds.
Nothing Fancy
The workmanship is careful and solid in the best sense. The slightly convex front panel is solid, without wanting to set records in weight or thickness. Neatly integrated next to the previously mentioned On/Off switch is a blue LED that blinks during the warm-up phase and then remains steadily lit.
The rear has much more to offer: The sturdy, gold-plated connection sockets are available separately for MM and MC—CAUTION: never connect MM and MC systems at the same time—while on the output side, in addition to the high-quality RCA jacks, there is also a pair of XLR connectors and a very solid grounding screw.
However, there is also cause for criticism here: They unfortunately skimped on the color printing for the labels—it is hardly visible except in bright sunshine. Also not entirely thought through are the labels for the switches on the two DIP switches—they are numbered from one to ten. But while switch number 1 on the right channel switches the subsonic filter on or off, number 1 on the left channel switches between MM and MC. That is at least confusing, but we have been assured upon inquiry in Oslo that this will be changed as quickly as possible in the production series.
Let’s take a look at the underside: There are channel-separated connections for the power supply, three hemispherical rubber feet for decoupling from the surface, and once again a not sufficiently printed diagram for the DIP switch adjustment options.
Musical Merits
Let’s turn to the musical merits of the Northerner, which are numerous and show that they did not stubbornly pack a circuit layout with short signal paths and optimized grounding onto the gold-plated boards at the drawing board, but obviously subsequently carried out sonic fine-tuning with keen and trained ears.
In addition to actually self-evident, yet even in high-price regions not always met expectations for noise and hum freedom, the neat little box from Norway convinces after proper break-in time of about a long weekend by its tonal unobtrusiveness. No deep bass pushes itself into the acoustic foreground, no upper bass area swells up spectacularly to suggest a fullness and size that is in fact not to be found in the groove. And no honey pot is provided to give singers a more pleasant appearance or to light a sound candle in the highest regions to give the events an unnatural shine.
Not for Show
No, the Hegel V10 is not a show-off, not a showman, not an intrusive dazzler or aggressive self-promoter. Calm and confident, with plenty of air between the instruments, it shows how good the Dire Straits and the sound engineers who attended them once were when “Telegraph Road” was recorded and Mark Knopfler thrilled experts and fans with his technically adept yet emotional playing. Here, the V10 let tones explode from nothing without depriving them of their natural attack and decay, tearing them out of their temporal context, or smearing them. With astonishing ease, it shook off the dynamic challenges of the recording as if effortlessly.
What it also masters is the depiction of characters. For example, even for less experienced ears, it is easy to hear the differences between different cartridges. The rather refined Audio Technica ART 1 could thus be distinguished without doubt in a matter of seconds from the full-bodied, significantly more physical sounding Benz LPS. This succeeded even with an old recording of Puccini’s “Tosca” with Maria Callas, originally recorded in mono and only trimmed to stereo during remastering, but even more easily when Itzhak Perlman spurred his violin to inspiring intensity in Max Bruch’s Concerto No. 1 in G minor for Violin and Orchestra with skill and fervor.
But we did not want to conclude the topic of classical music there and treated ourselves to some more passion with Tchaikovsky’s “Pathétique” under Vladimir Ashkenazy. The Hegel V10 left no doubt for a second that it was capable of transporting this pathos to the listener.
Emotionally Captivating
The next stop took us to London, where over a weekend a fantastic live album was created and pressed into orange vinyl. George Benson, singer and guitarist of the highest class, was a guest there with his band. The atmosphere of the two concerts condensed into one evening is captured here with rare intensity and musically delights with Benson’s virtuosity on the Ibanez guitar as well as that of his companions, but also convinces by the audience’s enthusiasm, which is overflowing already at the opener “Give Me The Night” and remains palpable with each of the further 13 tracks.
An album by the grandmaster of the flamenco guitar was next on the turntable: Paco de Lucia, who once again proved with the “Concierto de Aranjuez” how great the loss is that the music world has to mourn with his untimely death in 2014. Here it was the merit of the V10 to bring together emotion and playing skill and at the same time give the orchestra appropriate, if not boundless, space and to depict individual instruments detached yet in conjunction with the entire sound body.
Convincing All Around
Similarly convincing was how the V10 coped with Cologne’s mumbling king Wolfgang Niedecken. The Cologne bard recorded an album in 1987 aside from BAP with some “Complices”, which in most pieces comes across as somewhat lighter and more carefree, indeed at times downright cheerful and buoyant than one knew from the dialect rocker. The lyrics are only fragmentarily understandable even for those fluent in Kölsch without a lyric sheet, and yet this phono preamp makes the best of it. And one or another passage actually reveals itself by simply listening. In the numerous doubtful cases, the included booklet helps, which even contains translations into High German. There, dear streaming enthusiasts, the old medium vinyl record has set the benchmark in terms of user-friendliness and has held it to this day.
If you otherwise perhaps like display and remote control – here, the omission is exceedingly easy, because the Hegel V10 makes a more than pleasing contribution at a still moderate price to bringing the sonic merits of the mechanical scanning process into a very bright light!
Price: $1590
Dimensions WxHxD: 21cm x 6cm x 28cm
Weight: 3200g
Warranty: 2 years
Manufacturer: Hegel
General Data:
Very good to excellent measurement results – no noise, super-flat frequency responses, extremely low distortion – clean performance!
Specs
| Noise ratio Phono MM (5 mV, 1 kHz) | 77 dB(A) |
| Noise ratio Phono MC (0.5 mV, 1 kHz) | 74 dB(A) |
| Phono MM: Input sensitivity for 1 V U out | 5.84 mV |
| Phono MM: Gain factor | 34-47 dB |
| Phono MM: Overload capability | 70 mV |
| Phono MM: Input impedance | 46.8 kOhm |
| Phono MC: Input sensitivity for 1 V U out | 0.64 mV |
| Phono MC: Gain factor | 53 – 65 dB |
| Phono MC: Overload capability | 7.6 mV |
| Phono MC: Input impedance | variable Ohms |
| Output impedance at 1 kHz | 118/324 Ohms |
| Maximum output voltage | 11.9/23.8 Volts |
| Phono MM: Frequency response error | -0.2 dB |
| Phono MC: Frequency response error | -0.1 dB |
| Stereo channel separation (5mV/1kHz/1kOhm) | 74 dB |
| Width | 21 cm |
| Height | 6 cm |
| Depth | 28 cm |
| Weight | 3200 g |
MM/MC, separate inputs; with RCA connectors; output XLR and RCA; channel-separated DIP switches for gain, impedance, and capacitance adjustment as well as subsonic filter; external linear plug-in power supply; stand-by function can be switched off
Verdict
A transistor phono preamplifier with sensible features and excellent sound, not only considering the price, discretely built. Comfort features like remote control or display were omitted in favor of sound quality.
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