What is a hand-wired amplifier?

In a hand-wired amplifier, each component is soldered to the next manually. The opposite is an amp where all of the components are mounted on a printed circuit board.

So which one sounds better? That’s a trick question. Hand-wiring and PCBs are simply styles of assembly. The ultimately quality of the amplifier depends on other factors, including layout, component quality, and of course the design of the circuit itself.

We chose to hand-wire the Vesper amplifier because we felt our amplifier demanded it. Here’s why.