Hegel V10 Phono Preamplifier

The dip switches that you can adjust with relative ease, a small screwdriver or similar helps, are arrayed on either side of the back panel and offer alternative levels of impedance, capacitance and gain as well as the option to switch between MM and MC or use a subsonic filter, it’s not short on features. Using them, that’s slightly less obvious, the two sets of switches are mirrored so to increase gain by 5dB on the right channel you need switch 3, to do the same thing on the left it’s switch 8. It’s hardly challenging but is a little idiosyncratic. There’s a more extensive graphic in the (lovely) manual and on the bottom of the case however and this makes it relatively straightforward. A subsonic filter is a rare option on modern phono stages but if you’ve ever noticed your bass drivers moving in and out while playing vinyl you’ll know it can be useful.

Inputs are separate for MM and MC but you are advised against connecting both simultaneously, output is available on RCAs or XLRs, the latter are not described as providing a balanced signal but do provide more gain, 6dB more than the RCAs with a moving coil so worth having. One feature that wasn’t obvious to me because it had been disabled is auto sleep, you can choose to have the V10 put itself into standby after 15 minutes without a signal which is quite handy.

My listening commenced with the Hegel connected to a Rega P10 with the Rega Aphelion 2 MC cartridge reading the groove on Jeff Beck (with the Jan Hammer Group) Live [Epic] which starts with the car horns of ‘Freeway Jam’ and builds up an impressive head of funk rock powered steam, the V10 revealed the energy and intensity of the piece alongside its rather compressed soundstage. The bass was particularly appealing on ‘She’s a Woman’, powerful and tuneful with it, the timing that this stage delivered was very engaging indeed and made it hard to sit still in all honesty. The contemporary strains of Nassif Thiago’s ‘Soar Estranho’ [Mente, Gearbox] were delivered with the dynamics in full effect and a really electric feel, the image likewise was presented in precisely etched form. Again timing was very strong, the taut muscularity of the rhythms of this piece being clearly defined.

After a few more tracks it did start to sound a little forward for my tastes, a little unforgiving of any brightness in recordings and I was beginning to think that the Aphelion 2 might be a bad match, but not before I looked into the capacitance setting. This shouldn’t affect moving coils but past experience with this cartridge suggested the opposite and I selected the 100 pF option, it doesn’t say what the default capacitance is with no preference selected but I discovered that it’s 120pF so not much different. This did however mellow the sound to a degree and it was easy to enjoy Sarathay Korwar’s My East is your West [Gearbox] which was good and open with a very live feel and decent low level resolution. I could feel the acoustic of the venue being projected into my own and this was amplified when the audience were aroused.

After all that acoustic beauty it was time for something a bit more meaty and I found the Prodigy’s second album Music for the Jilted Generation and picked out ‘Poison’, here the Hegel revealed just what a monster tune this is, the balance is positively savage and this gives the bass a slam that’s very weighty indeed. Once I had recovered from the battering I put something more relaxed on it Wish You Were Here [Pink Floyd, Harvest] and remembered just why this remains such a well loved album, in retrospect it was also highly influential with its spacey vibe and lurvely synths. All this and more was revealed by the V10’s super quiet circuitry but I still suspected that it wasn’t best suited to the Rega MC so a Dynavector DV-20X2L took its place and that proved to be a good move. The relatively smooth nature of this MC proved a good match with the eager V10, bringing out the lyrics, rhythm and scale of Joni Mitchell on Miles of Aisles [Asylum], articulating the band’s excellent playing and bringing the atmosphere of the event into the room.