Very sweet sound. Vocal and strings are outstanding. Remote control is very vanilla but works well for couch potato like me.

Reliability. Super expensive service at Melos Restoration, where bad parts are replaced by unreliable new parts which breaks down in a few months. The basic design appears to be so flawed, swapping parts just won't do. Donate your excess disposal income to your local charity instead.

In a nutshell, this Melos SHA Gold Reference is like NFL quarterback Drew Bledose: It is superb as long as it works, but it barely works, and you need to care it like God to protect it from failing. Only idiot like me would pay over $1100 for it. I got it within 10 months of Melos Restoration Service. Within a month, the balance control is gone. Then the headphone jack died on me. Then 3 months later, volume control is gone too. I just felt like I invested in some dot.com stock. What a piece of junk. Read the Melos website before buying even an cheap one. They even admit that the original parts and designs were messed up, so they would encourage the current owners to upgrade so to "address" the shortcomings. I finally traded it in and took a major loss. This is the 2nd Melos product I used (the 1st one was an Melos 111 or something like that preamp - it died after one week). I swore to God and all of civialized universe that I WILL NEVER NEVER NEVER NEVER subject myself to the Melos treatment ever again in my life. So the sound is superbly sweet. So what? Would you like to marry a wife who'd frustrate you 95% of the time and give you joy only 5% of the time? Stereophile Class A rated tells you how meaningless Stereophile's rating is. Whoever says great reliability from this unit must be the people who try to sell it soon.

Similar Products Used:

Sonic Frontiers Line 3, Counterpoint SA5000, Mcintosh C22.

Passive output - transparent Active tube output - rich, more solid bass

Passive - can lack volume, could be too detailed for some Active tube output - too muffled for my taste, detail lost

I have posted a previosu review of the SHA-GOLD and have just read all the other reviews. I would like to make an important point not mentioned in the other reviews. This pre-amp has two completely different outputs. One set is passive, just going through the photentiometer volume / balance control and bypassing the tubes completely. The other is active and passes through the tube amplification stage. These two sound completely different. I want to make sure everyone realises that and tries both. The passive is extremely transparent, but volumes can be low and it can lack some punch. In contrast the SHA-GOLD (not reference, haven't heard that) tube outputs give a rich and solid sound but also smooths out a lot of the life and detail from the music.

Similar Products Used:

Pass Aleph L Melos SHA-1 Home-mase passive with ALPS pot.

kicks but on any other $2000 pre! dead silent!

Looks like it was only designed to be in a rack system.

I don't have a clue why this pre got so many bad reviews. It is 1 of the best pres I have ever owned, and is also a long time favorite of stereophile magazine, where it received a " A " rating.

Similar Products Used:

Audio Research, Sonic Frontiers, Balanced Audio, Rogue.

Both the digital and the analog (phono output) are very good.

At times the turnon relay (2minute relay) will not turn the pre amp on.

Went from a Melos SHA-1 to this one. With upgrades its awesome. Too bad Melos cannot any longer represent thier product.

Similar Products Used:

McIntosh, etc

Transparent, clean, smooth sounding. Lovely midrange with the Mullard tubes.

Power supply need upgrade. The Reference upgrade is a must. No balance input.

If you don't have the Reference upgrade. Use a good power cord that will give clean power. I have great success with Blue Circle BC 62. Good tubes a must. Absolute no problem with my Sha-Gold for 3 years.

Great Sound

Long Service down time

I have a Melos 210B
Its an ancesor of the SHA-1 I purchased it at Audio Advisor.
For $1000 And It sounds great. Good head phone out put too.
The 210b has balanced out puts and RCA out puts.
I guess if I had it to do it over again I'd go for
a VTL 2.5 I heard on in Atlanta and I liked it as well.
I would also think the service would takes less time.

I enjoy the Melos and I will keep it for a long time.
I must caution anyone on the purchase of a Melos because
of the long wait time for service.
2 months for me.
As an avionics tech I am qualified to perform repairs on the 210b. Now all I need to do is get the schematics and I be set.
The tubes are a common type and I can get them any where.

Well thats it so far

5 stars for performace and 3 stars overall due to the service.

Its a good product but getting fast service, well, it wont happen.
My advice to Melos is to get more technicians to work for them so the down time is shorter.

My experience with Melos products has been very similar to most of what has been written in this forum. The service person I dealt with must have had a book of excuses next to the phone every time I called to inquire about the status of my warranty repair. This was much more than just bad customer service. I was repeatedly lied to. I suggest you tape any/all conversations you have with the "used car salesmen" at working in Melos's Customer Service and DO NOT PRE-PAY FOR ANY PRODUCT OR SERVICE.

Why trust a Company that has a reputation for poor customer service but now says it has changed its ways when you could deal with a Company like AR, CJ, BAT, VTL, etc., who have always understood the need take care of the customer? Burned once, shame on you. Burned twice, shame on me!! I'm never going to let that happen.

Transparent via the passive output
Dynamic and rich via the tube driven output

Thin via the passive output
Clouded via the tube output

This is a review for the Melos SHA-GOLD, not the reference version. I find the unit quite good although the headphone output only worked for about 5 minutes after I bought the machine new. It took ages before they worked out what the problem was, a pot in the preamp was faulty.

I want to point out that this preamp has two outputs, one passive and one active and they sound totally different. The passive is very transparent but undynamic and uninvolving. The active is dynamic and fun but not that transparent. I'm not happy with either. I'm going to either sell the preamp or upgrade it to the Reference. One guy here claimed the Reference was so much better but from his description I'm worried that he is actually comparing the active output of his new SHA-GOLD Reference to the passive output of his old SHA-GOLD.

I'm not that impressed with this product and will probably by a Pass preamp instead.

superb headphone amp

customer service

My unit is a 3 yaer old SHA Gold (not reference)I love this as a headphone amp although my Audio Research SP14 has a more transparent line section. Over the years I have had to deal with both Audio Research's and Melos' service departments. There is no comparison! AR was easy to deal with and I got my unit back within the stated timeframe. Melos did not meet the stated turnaround time, requiring me to make numerous follow-up calls that were answered by people who didn't know or didn't care. Again, I have never heard a better sounding headphone amp than the Melos but the service experience did leave a bad taste.

Similar Products Used:

Audio Research SP14