The Shindo Vosne-Romanee preamplifier speaks to the world through a pair of such transformers (footnote 3) which surely take some of the blame for its motorbike-like price. Other such factors are the Vosne-Romanee’s custom-wound Lundahl moving-coil step-up transformers; its Telefunken EF800, Siemens C3m, General Electric 6072, and Philips 6189 and 6X4 vacuum tubes; its many vintage capacitors (Sprague Black Cats, Sprague Vitamin Qs, a pair of extremely large Sprague oil capacitors); and, of course, its gorgeous metalwork and fully hard-wired circuitry.

Its steel chassis—which, according to Shindo, sounds better than an aluminum chassis, with or without the industry-standard stupid-thick faceplate—is no simple box, but rather has a number of integral partitions for shielding and structural integrity. The steel top is fastened to the outer box and to each of those partitions, requiring a total of 26 machine bolts for one chassis surface—and all of the bolt openings are tapped with the appropriate threads. Unlike the products from some of perfectionist audio’s best-known makers of tube amps, Shindo’s enclosures can actually be put back together the same way they came apart.