16/03/2009

AT2000 plus point (or the point of AT2000plus).

As always, we have been busy looking to find ways of offering you the most musical sounding products, and have just launched the AT2000plus that takes the already well reviewed (and newly launched) AT2000 amplifier to the next level. Talking UK retail prices, the AT2000plus is £225.00p more, costing £1,575.00p RRP. I have been asked why bother with such a 'small' relative additional increase for a second integrated amplifier in the range, when the incremental quality improvement is not at all small?

Well, this comes down to our business philosophy, that in part sets out to offer our customers excellent value for money. Yes, we could have stuck another £399.00p on the price of the AT2000 and still offered a good value upgrade, but we would rather you kept the difference, or better still, spend it on a signal or speaker cable upgrade, and made the AT2000plus sound even better in your system! We will upgrade as an after-sale by the way, discuss with your dealer.

Regarding the AT2000, we have just had some interesting news from our Netherlands distributor Music2. They pointed me toward a web review:
http://www.hifi.nl/recensies/3757/Astin_Trew_AT2000.html

and kindly translated some of the text.

''The AT2000 has become one of my favorites, if I had to recommend an amplifier in the 2000 euro range, this is the one.''

''Astin Trew is becoming a very strong player at the market, very hard to beat''

''A very strong competition for the well known Naim's, Prima Luna's and Primare's. It reminds me the most of a good old Sugden design''

This way I could go on and on, 4 complete pages filled with comments like this. "


I am assured no money changed hands! It is always nice to receive favorable reviews like this, but you must always listen yourself of course. I wonder what this reviewer is going to make of the AT2000plus?!!

Our Music2 distributor has been busy undertaking several Hi-Fi exhibitions lately, as well as demonstrating our products to dealers throughout the Benelux countries. They recently made the following observations, which are useful - and perhaps telling:

'We have also started (distributing) with the turntables of Acoustic-Signature, very well build and sounding, they really go well with the Astin Trew electronics. The AT 3500 [Astin Trew CD player] already received the name ''the one digital thing closest to analogue'' because of these combinations. Together with the DSS loudspeakers we try to bring out the message that Astin Trew goes very well with absolute high-End equipment. We believe that these combinations do the trick. The combination AT3500, AT1000 and 2 x AT5000's sounded already better than a Naim combination with Living Voice loudspeakers and a Linn LP12 (which totally was 3 times the price by the way), a complete Sugden setup ( twice the price), and Sonneteer (also twice the price).'

And finally (having sung our praises far too much I think) I can now let our US and Canada supporters (we already have a database of potential US customers) know that we have appointed Stephen Monte at Quest For Sound, 2307-R Bristol Pike, Bensalem , Pa.19020 215-953-9099 as our distributor. Contact him directly and he will put you in touch with his nearest dealer to you, for a demonstration.

Also, we would like to welcome Mark and Gary Cargill as new UK dealers for Astin Trew, our first Scottish dealership - Audio Emotion. www.audioemotion.co.uk. based just outside Edinburgh. They opened for business at the beginning of March and have a terrific demo. facility as well as a home demonstration service. All the best Mark and Gary.

Happy listening, Michael Osborn.