Dave Duvall said, “I haven’t heard a room at a show yet that the Lamm products didn’t sound good in.” The rest of us shrugged our shoulders because we couldn’t disagree. Of course, a great system is made up of great components.

With the Artemis Eos Signature loudspeakers and Bass Modules the sound was full range, exceptionally rich with tremendous depth. Vladimir Shushurin, LAMM’s president and designer, alternated between the LAMM ML1 tube amplifiers and the M2.1 solid-state amplifiers. The Accuphase PP-25 CD player was connected to the Lamm L1 line-stage preamplifier.

LAMM Industries showed their new ML-2 amplifiers. These are single-ended, monoblock designs with 6C33C output tubes — each amp produces 18 wpc.  The retail price is $29,290 for the pair. — SoundStage!

Spending the next two days working my way from the 12th floor to the 1st, I felt like a Bedouin. Besides show conditions, which often make good equipment sound very dry and uninvolving, being a two-channel/music guy (in spite of earlier experience at the Sony exhibit), the near 50/50 split between home theater and straight music exhibitors meant long dry spells with only the occasional musical oasis. In an unfortunate turn, one of those cool pools of music was the third room my camel and I wandered into, the Kharma/LAMM setup. There, Trevor DeMaat had the most detailed, tight and musical bass I heard at the entire show (DAS adds…and all this using the brand new Lamm ML-2 single-ended amplifiers, pictured here, rated at only 18 wpc! The Kharma/LAMM pairing was certainly a wonderful pairing.). While, early on, the sound was also a bit cluttered above the bass, by the end of the show it was a true retreat from the noise that many other rooms offered.

The upper floors also contained several other havens. On the 12th floor, the Artemis/LAMM/MAC room offered sound that was expressive, detailed and very dynamic.” — SoundStage!, Todd Warnke

LAMM/Kharma speakers. Despite some constricted dynamics arising from an amplifier/speaker mismatch, this system was extremely natural and pure. The 18-watt-per-channel monoblock LAMM amplifiers equalled the midrange harmonic resolution and ease of the best of the single-ended genre.” — Ultimate Audio, Miles Astor (Fall, 1998)

LAMM introduced a monaural single-ended tube amp, the model ML2. Output power is 18 watts into 16/8/4 ohms from a single Russian 6C33C. The amp uses a sophisticated voltage regulator stage, which also incorporates a 6C33C triode.”–FI magazine (June, 1998, Vol. 3, issue 6)

LAMM Industries unveiled the ML2 single-ended power amp on Kharma Exquisite speakers. The ML2 uses a single triple-nippled 6C33C in the output stage with another for voltage regulation, and is conservatively rated at 18W into 16, 8, and 4 ohms running in pure class A. LAMM claims it’s the first single-ended design “capable of reproducing the full range of audio frequencies and recreating the original spectral balance and harmonic structure of recorded material with almost 100% accuracy.” The parts bin is stuffed with top-drawer items: Dale metal-film resistors, Electrocube and Roederstein film capacitors, Cornell Dubilier electrolytics, and Hammond chokes. Alas, the ML2 monoblocks will set you back $14,645 each.” — Stereophile, Jonathan Scull (September, 1998)

Before long I had to take the elevator to the last stop, the 12th floor, to see Trevor DeMatt of Kharma and Elina Dobin of LAMM. Monica and I had such a good time hosting them at our home before our Super-Bowl Sunday meeting I could not wait to catch up. Lamm had equipment in both the Kharma and the Artemis rooms. In the photo above, Elina’s husband Vladimir is standing on the left. Although audiophiles can seldom agree on much I think it is no contest that we will all agree that Elina is much better looking than Vladimir. 

Trevor had the Kharma Exquisite speakers we heard at our meeting in a small hotel room (15′ x 17′) connected to the Lamm single ended 18W tube amps, Lamm preamp and a Wadia front end. I believe that the extremely dense construction of the Exquisite loudspeaker enabled it to play in the small room like a set of mini monitors with bass. I expected that the prodigious bass we heard the three way Exquisite thumping out in the 25’x50′ Hellenic Center would overload this small hotel room. According to Charles van Oosterum, the speaker’s designer, this is because, “the normally added coloration of either structure or air born resonance-energy is completely absent due to the constrained layer construction of the Exquisite.” Phil Abbatte