The JBL SA750 75th Anniversary integrated amplifier and the L100 Classic 75 speaker were officially announced on 7th January (8th in Japan). With their handsome aluminium-silver finish very much in the classic JBL tradition, they have been causing quite a stir on social media — “that looks fantastic!”, “I want one!” and so on. The local release date is May, incidentally.
I myself thought “now that’s something” the instant I saw it — a wonderfully stylish retro design. But then information came through from a follower on Twitter, and it turns out that the catalogue specifications for the JBL SA750 are identical to those of the ARCAM SA30, a 120W Class G amplifier…
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JBL’s parent company is Harman International, which was itself acquired by South Korea’s Samsung in 2016. Harman then acquired British company ARCAM (A&R Cambridge) in 2017 — and it is this arrangement, with both JBL and ARCAM sitting under the Harman umbrella, that seems to be the mechanism behind this kind of international collaboration. This is not confirmed information and remains at the level of speculation, but some overseas web media have also described it as ARCAM-based (Arcam to lay down a base of Class G amplification), so it seems fairly safe to assume.
I have been using ARCAM CD players for many years myself (Alpha 5 Plus → CD72T), but to be honest, the soundstage-oriented, refined character of ARCAM’s sound and the hot, jazzy character of JBL’s sound are completely different — or rather, they might even point in opposite directions. So I couldn’t help wondering: is this really going to be all right? That said, many people will no doubt be buying the simultaneously released JBL L100 Classic 75 as a matched pair, and there is a possibility that while basing itself on the ARCAM SA30 circuitry, the JBL SA750 has been tuned with different components to bring out that lively JBL sound. We won’t really know until images of the internal circuitry start circulating, but it’s something I’d like to be optimistic about. The suggested retail price of the JBL SA750 in the United States is $3,000 — the same as the ARCAM SA30. The L100 Classic 75 speakers are $5,500 a pair. The UK price of the ARCAM SA30, incidentally, is £1,999.
The ARCAM SA30 is an integrated amplifier with a built-in DAC, Wi-Fi and streaming support, and MQA compatibility. If you look at it purely as an analogue integrated amplifier stripped of all those extra features, $3,000 does feel a touch expensive — but given that it is packed with all the latest features one could ask for, perhaps that’s just how it is.
The ARCAM SA30 itself has received five stars from both What Hi-Fi? and Hi-Fi Choice, and ARCAM of Cambridge has a long-standing reputation as one of Britain’s largest and most established audio manufacturers when it comes to amplifier design — though it is a maker whose focus is on the entry-level to mid-range rather than high-end products. In Japan, DENON was their distributor until around ten years ago. ARCAM has since withdrawn from the Japanese market, but the JBL SA750 will very likely be released here in Japan, and it has the feel of something that could prove quite popular. What will the price be, I wonder?
Being someone who fundamentally prefers slim designs, I would normally want to say that I actually prefer the look of the ARCAM SA30 over the JBL SA750 — but ARCAM dropped their silver-white colour option a few years back, apparently swept along by the prevailing design trends in Europe and America, and now only offer black, which has rather dampened my enthusiasm for them of late. So personally, I think the JBL SA750’s retro design, with its aluminium panel and wooden side cheeks, is by far the more attractive of the two.
Realistically, the ARCAM SA20 is probably the one within my reach
