Specifications

equipment review
er
20 | Australian Hi-Fi
Legend has it that EveAnna Manley named
the Stingray following a chance remark by
the legendary J. Gordon Holt*, founder of
Stereophile magazine, who after looking at a
bar-napkin sketch Ms Manley had propped
up next to his martini during a high-end
show, remarked that she’d drawn a picture
of a stingray.
I have no idea of whether this story
is true or not, but the amplifier is
certainly called a ‘Stingray’ and it does
have a stylised illustration of a Stingray
on the front panel that looks as if it could
have been drawn on a bar napkin—and,
if you get the angle exactly right when
looking at the amplifier from above, it
does indeed look a little like a Stingray.
However, even if you don’t agree that
the amplifier looks like a Stingray, you’d
have to admit that it’s certainly a very
unusual-looking amplifier: there aren’t
too many amplifiers with six sides—nor
have there ever been. (And contrary to
some reports, it’s not a hexagon!)
The Equipment
You don’t need me to tell you it’s a valve
amplifier. For those ‘in the know’, the
fact that it’s made by Manley Laboratories
would be sufficient, while for those not in
the know, the photograph above speaks
for itself. What you do need me to tell you
is that it’s a push-pull integrated ampli-
fier that’s rated at 40-watts per channel
Manley Laboratories
Stingray Valve
Integrated Amplifier
into 5Ω. The Stingray used to be rated at
50-watts per channel, but that was before
Manley Labs decided to make the output
stage switchable between ultralinear and
triode operation. The dual-mode amplifier
is now rated at 40-watts (ultralinear) or
20-watts (triode). Owners of single-mode
(ultralinear) Stingrays can have their old
models upgraded if they want. The model
I received, hence the one reviewed here,
was a single-mode Stingray. Why 5Ω when
most speakers are 4Ω, 6Ω, or 8Ω? It’s not as
strange as you’d think, because the varying
impedance of all moving coil loudspeak-
ers means that any output transformer
secondary will be incorrectly matched a lot
of the time, so picking a ‘midway’ point
*Since Australians are renowned for claiming anyone
famous as being ‘one of our own’ if there’s even the most
tenuous link to Australia (such as being born and raised in
New Zealand!), there’s a good case for us claiming Holt as
an Aussie. Although he was born in the US, Gordon J. Holt
arrived in Australia in 1935 and lived in Melbourne until 1952,
during which time he became a published writer, selling
his first story on the design and construction of a battery-
operated portable radio to the magazine Radio and Hobbies,
which later became Electronics Australia. He has stated
for the record that the descriptive language he used in the
first issue of Stereophile was ‘borrowed’ from the Radiotron
Designer’s Handbook published by the Amalgamated
Wireless Valve Company of Australia, later to become AWA.
ManleylabHFSep06.indd 20 22/01/2009 1:55:37 PM