Audio Refinement Complete INT

Offering a beautiful Audio Refinement Integrated amp in excellent condition. Original list price was $995 for this "YBA at a bargain price" kit designed by Yves-Bernard André. Interior caps, transformer, output terminals, and many other bits are right out of the YBA parts-bin. Google reviews and find SoundStage and Stereophile reviews that compare this integrated very favorably to much higher priced amps.
Unit is offered without remote control (which was sold separately).

Enter the Complete

Even the most casual glance at the Complete reveals that our clever marketeer’s recipe for cost-cutting has been disregarded with outright defiance. There’s no plastic in sight. Rather, an 8mm-thick brushed-aluminum faceplate is CNC machined to close tolerances. The top cover is 2mm-thick non-magnetic aluminum. 

The Complete offers separate source and record-out selectors via two sizable, well-contoured rotary controls and a total of six inputs, including two tape loops, which are accessed via small front-panel push buttons or by remote. Miniature green status LEDs confirm selected inputs. So the thing looks great from the front, especially in the silver finish. But they probably skimped around back, right? Not so. Note the high-quality removable power cord, solid gold-plated RCA connectors, custom-made gold-plated speaker binding posts and the on/off switch. Wait, wasn’t there a power switch in the lower left-hand corner of the front panel? Indeed, but it toggles between standby and signal-ready, confirmed by a change from red to green of the attendant pilot light. Solid-state devices, it is commonly agreed, can take extraordinarily long before they thermally stabilize -- 48 hours is not unheard of. By including a standby feature, YBA went decidedly upscale on the Complete, ensuring superior sonics and long-term reliability. 

Before we act hastily and proclaim with a sigh of relief that obviously the innards must then all be junk, let me save you some embarrassment. The all-important capacitors are originalYBA issue, as are all the output terminals, AC socket, internal wires, AC cord and fuses. Fuses? You bet. Yves-Bernard looks at every parameter possible when he designs, and if his vendors can’t supply the parts exactly as he requires them, he has them manufactured to his own specifications. This includes fuses. Think about it: Audiophiles go through the nth degree to optimize signal transfer via exotic cable terminations and contact solutions. The actual cables then often sport sizes and price tags that send full-blown engineers into gleeful spasms of uncontrollable laughter. Nonetheless, there, in every amp’s power supply rails, are these little pernicious things called fuses, with wire the size of a human hair. When Yves-Bernard claims fuses affect sonics, I’m inclined to concur. As far as chassis support goes, the now-familiar YBA triangulation scheme is in effect in the entire Complete line, using three non-magnetic aluminum footers damped with a special rubber material. Lifting the Complete into place reminds you quickly that nearly 20 pounds seem pretty stout for its diminutive size.

Hmmm. Absolutely no signs whatsoever of overt or sly cost-cutting measures to be found. To the contrary, the level of fit and finish, the features and audiophile details, all suggest a suit from Saville Row such as .007 would pick up over martini and lobster rather than the off-the-rack coats we commoners purchase during lunch break.......                                                                          SoundStage! "Audio Refinement Complete Integrated Amplifier", by Srajan Ebaen