In France, buying a one-box amplifier has never meant that your finances were flat. The result is amplifiers like this one.

Why did it take so long for French hi-fi manufacturers to begin exporting to the New World? Insularity? Hey, the British did it with energy decades ago, and they really do live on an island! For years we would see only samples of the high end gear from France, usually with an adapter allowing the round-pinned power cable to be plugged into our flat-bladed power outlets. Major changes began about a decade ago, and it is now common for exotic hi-fi gear in our stores to have "made in France" labels.
     Vecteur is not a new company, but its electronics designer, William Andrea, is a comparative newcomer to it, having worked with other designers, notably Yves-Bernard André. Like his mentors, he doesn't feel hemmed in by convention. In one of his models, for instance, he uses a circuit board made of Teflon! Only he knows how he gets the copper tracks to stick to a material designed not to stick to anything!
     His Club 10 amplifier is imposing, with somewhat austere æsthetics. The front panel looks as though it could be metallic, though actually it is made of Medite. The volume control (the only knob on the front panel) is gigantic, and its set screw is right next to its cursor instead of being on the other side, an odd visual faux pas. Ironically you may never touch that knob, because the Club 10 is entirely remote-controlled. The illuminated buttons sharing the front panel are for power (actually for moving from standby to full on) and for selecting one of the five high-level inputs or the tape loop. The actual switching is done by relays right on the circuit board, using several contacts in parallel to reduce resistance.
     The first input, by the way, is for a DAT (digital audio tape), suggesting that the front panel was designed some time ago. There is an input labelled "video," but its signal goes right through the volume control, as with the other inputs. An uncontrolled input would be nice, to facilitate putting together a hybrid music/movie system.
     The rear panel includes the usual in and out jacks, with (curiously) two pairs of tape out jacks (marked "mon"). They are of less than impressive quality considering the price of the amplifier, fashioned from gold-colored sheet metal outside where you can see, but nickel-plated inside where you can't. There are two sets of output binding posts to allow easy biwiring, and they at least are of reasonable quality. The supplied IEC power cable uses high grade connectors, something you don't often see on integrated amplifiers!
     The remote control is an off-the-shelf Philips (the Club 10 uses the Philips RC5 codes), with more buttons than it needs. Vecteur will produce its own remote later, and possibly--says the distributor--send one to existing owners of the amplifier.
     We are told that a phono section is under development, but none was available when we reviewed the unit, and so all of the listening was done with Compact Discs.
     And we opened the listening session with...

Would you like to read the full review of the Vecteur Club 10 amplifier? Click here to order the print edition of UHF No. 56.