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In a departure from a time honoured Creek tradition, the design and style of the 5350 SE Integrated Amplifier is definitely Hi-End. Creek's electronic design skill was always partially disguised by having to use less expensive casework and critical components, to meet very tight UK manufacturing budgets.
It is now popular for budget Hi-Fi to be made offshore, however, Creek believe that high quality British built products are still in vogue around the world, but need to be priced accordingly. Therefore, the company continues to manufacture in the UK but, to balance their designs, have now housed their excellent circuitry in larger and more stylish casework.
Built in an aluminium case, with a machined solid aluminium front panel the 5350 SE provides superior sound quality, look and feel. The 5350 SE is constructed in a modular way, with a separate power amp, pre-amp and remote volume control circuit boards, connected with computer grade flat cables, plugs and sockets. It features a passive pre-amp circuit, providing no additional gain to the source signal. Although not strictly necessary, it can be configured with an active pre-amp, if required, by plugging-in the optional 53LINE circuit board with 6dB's of gain. An optional MM or MC Phono pre-amp can also be plugged-in to further increase the flexibility of this fine integrated amplifier.
The Remote control circuit uses a motorised ALPS 6 way rotary switch, to select the desired input, and high grade 16 and 27 mm motorised volume potentiometers, controlled either manually or via the remote handset. In addition, the 5350 SE can be set to record one input, while simultaneously listening to a different input, similar to a video recorder.
To accommodate Bi-wiring and Bi-amping, the 5350 SE is fitted with 2 pairs of high current speaker binding posts plus separate pre-amp output and power amp input sockets. Speaker A/B selection is switchable from the front panel; joining and separating the pre/power sections is achieved with a link on the rear panel. The 5350 SE also hosts a front panel mounted headphone socket, which is unusual in modern integrated amplifiers.
Short circuit, DC offset and anti-thump protection circuitry makes the 5350 SE a sophisticated, user friendly integrated amplifier, with a technical performance close to the best that can be achieved.
For the technically minded:- The 5350 SE uses a high current, N channel only, MOS-FET power output stage, driven by a P channel MOS-FET phase splitter and double differential voltage amplifier with symmetrical class A driver, to achieve ultra-low distortion and high speed with minimal negative feedback. Therefore, the 5350 SE is able to avoid using any active circuitry in its pre-amp and still achieve high input sensitivity. The optional plug-in 53LINE amp uses all discrete transistor circuitry in a unique double differential servo controlled design achieving unbelievably low distortion and noise performance.
The 5350 SE uses a 250VA toroidal transformer, together with multiple power supply capacitors totalling 31,000uF, 105 degree C, low impedance, to achieve the quality of computer grade capacitors but with very low inductance, for the ultimate in sonic performance .
Like other Creek amplifiers, the 5350 SE is DC servo controlled, to enable direct coupling from input to output and accurate low frequency roll-off, thereby eliminating sonically degrading capacitors from its signal path.
The 5350 SE is a landmark in Hi-Fi design, incorporating state of the art circuitry with elegant styling to achieve a versatile and high fidelity amplifier par excellence.