How we Build 'em

Often, guitarists will judge the perceived 'value' of an amplifier based purely on tone and options. But this is is only one half of the picture. The other half of this is the component choice, design methodology and manufacturing technique. We'd like to take this opportunity to let you in on some of the things that you don't normally get to see, and to answer some questions about what sets the Revelation apart from a standard guitar amplifier.

- The Revelation is proudly built on 2.4mm thick, double sided, through-hole PCBs finished in thick solder mask to further protect the PCB against corrosion and accidental short circuits. We have absolutely nothing against point-to-point construction, but you simply cannot build such a technologically advanced amplifier using point-to-point. In fact, an amplifier this involved which is built using point-to-point construction would be considerably less reliable and predictable.

- The track plating thickness is up to 8 times thicker than the plating found on some mass-produced amps.

- Track widths and clearances typically exceed the guidelines set by the ANSI/IPC-2221 standard for PCB design.

- We went through over a dozen iterations of PCB layouts, getting our PCBs as close to perfect as possible.

- Each and every component was chosen for optimum performance, balancing the needs of tone, noise, electrical tolerance and longevity. We use a a carefully selected mixture of metal film and carbon comp resistors, as well as silver mica and audiophile quality WIMA capacitors for the audio signal path. (ever considered the sonic impact of polypropylene vs. polyester caps for different applications? We have.)

- All PCBs are hand loaded, and hand soldered, one component at a time right here in the MI Audio workshop. We don't out-source the PCB assembly for machine wave soldering. This painstaking process allows us to have complete confidence in each and every solder joint.

- All critical audio potentiometers are full-size, 24mm potentiometers, custom made for MI Audio.

- Audio cables are manufactured by Belden. The cables are double shielded. All critical audio cables are single core to avoid the effect of inter-core capacitive coupling.

- All power cabling is high voltage Teflon coated, over-speced multi-core wiring.

- Carefully selected and speced transformers. For example, our power transformer is a custom wound torroidal transformer, whose high voltage winding is designed to deliver 160VA of power, ensuring effortless performance. The transformer is then encased in a steel shield for noiseless electrical operation, similar to the technique used in high end valve hi-fi equipment.

- The chassis is made from 1.5mm galvanised steel, laser cut, bent, welded and finished here in Sydney, Australia.

- The face plates are the highest quality, mil finished aluminium. All holes are precision laser cut, with the colour and text anodised on, (not powder coated and silk screened) creating the highest quality finished.

- All cabinetry work is done by us at the MI Audio workshop, from wood preparation to tolexing and finishing. All our joinery (yes, even the amp head-shell) is dovetail, using hand held, precision made Australian dovetailing jigs.

- Each section is individually tested. The final amplifier is tested multiple times, including full load testing, rebiased, inspected, signed off, and packed for shipping.