Over the last seven or eight years, we have been developing in-house tube amplifiers and this helped enormously in understanding tubes, components, and designs. Thöress has my highest approval rating for making solid, no-frills amplifiers and I never complain when being asked by our publisher to cover their room.
This year Thöress was partnering with Acoustic Manufacture, Ictra, Tedeska, Luna Cables and Merill – Williams who brought their latest R.E.A.L. 101.3 turntable.
The room spotted the Acoustic Manufacture QRD scattering device right between the speakers, which helped in soundstage depth and a cool stack of the complete Thoress models including that gorgeous sounding Parametric Phono Equalizer (9.300euro) which played amazingly well with the Tedeska hand made moving coil cartridge (a proven match, the two companies have been sharing the same Munich booth for years now). Reinhard Thoress also brought the new Eintakt-Hybrid-Triode Monoblocks which at 12.950 euro had no problem in driving the in house designed 1D66 or 2CD12 speakers on rotation. The system was wired with Luna Cables, one of those few brands that go the old fashioned way, making vintage styled tinned copper cables, and this is probably an appropriate match for tube amplifiers, at least if I were to judge this system as a whole under show conditions.
Coming out of the room I found myself staring at the Thöress amps, again. The looks and the built quality is reminiscent of the Second World War military-grade equipment, the layout is exemplary, the quality parts are second to none. There is nothing fancy in these designs, we are talking about quintessential craftsmanship but the sound of this room was exemplary in both female voices and small scale orchestras. Pat Metheny’s vibrant guitar was quite realistic, if I were to buy a medium-sized system for myself and basing my choice on the Munich 2019 show, this would probably have been it.
High Water Sound used to make some nice systems with Thoress. Not sure if there is still a relationship there.