PrimaLuna EVO 300 Hybrid Tube Integrated Amp

The best of tubes and the best of solid-state in a fully dual mono design with top-shelf components and sophisticated power supplies.

“I can’t believe they’re selling it at this price!” That’s the first reaction of anyone who peeks into the Floyd Design PrimaLuna EVO 300 Hybrid, filled to nearly bursting with the highest quality components.

The EVO 300 Hybrid uses same preamp gain stage as the award-winning PrimaLuna EVO 400 Preamplifier, which was designed by Marcel Croese, former chief engineer, Goldmund Switzerland. That means all-tube and dual mono. The only thing we left out was tube rectification because it isn’t appropriate for this application. It took two years of research and experimentation to perfectly pair it with the output circuit designed by Jan de Groot who has designed all of PrimaLuna’s MOSFET circuits, and was behind all the Sphinx Audio designs from 1995 to 2000.

Apart from combining tube magic with solid state control, the EVO 300 Hybrid focuses on lowering source impedance while also lowering noise, offering the highest possible fidelity and bandwidth.

Tube in the Front, Solid State in the Back

The input stages of the EVO 300 Hybrid use two 12AU7 tubes in the gain stages, and four 12AU7 driver tubes. The doubled driver tubes ensure a lower impedance on the output stages, allowing for large dynamics, a huge soundstage, and lots of beautiful harmonics and texture. 

The solid-state output stages use cascading JFETs from Linear Systems and each channel boasts two complementary pairs of MOSFETs from Exicon. The setup is calibrated to offer the lowest impedance, and the 100 W into 8 ohm (160 W into 4 ohm)  power sounds massive, allowing this amp to preserve tube glory while offering the excellent grip, low-bass power and overall control that MOSFETs are known for.

The most crucial capacitors, the ones in the signal path, are extremely expensive tin-foil caps that are made in Europe. Elsewhere, even the caps outside the signal path are the top-quality models that modders use to upgrade their regular amps!

The Power Supply is Everything

The power supply in the EVO 300 Hybrid is extremely complex. Increasingly, manufacturers are realizing that there’s more to power supplies than was ever thought before, and that their design has a huge effect on the sound of the amp. For example, a power supply inductor can work as a second-order harmonic filter, so every part has to be carefully considered for its sonic qualities.

The amplifier uses a custom wound set of potted toroidal transformers for true dual mono. It also has a pair of PrimaLuna’s custom designed AC offset killers that the company is world famous for. There is extensive shielding in various parts of the amplifier to block any noise from the main power supply getting into the delicate preamp section.

Looking into the chassis of the EVO 300 Hybrid, you will see a red glow of LEDs, reminiscent of the glow of tube filaments. This isn’t just a cosmetic touch. Apart from emitting light, LEDs can function as low-noise, extremely quick diodes in electronic circuits. Designers have found that red LEDs in particular offer the best performance when used this way.

The PrimaLuna Hybrid’s power supply circuits use high-performance LEDs at critical points, offering various circuits in its extremely sophisticated power supply, their own supply of low-noise electrical power.