The Whest website is singularly uninformative as to what goes into their products, except to intimate that they use bipolar transistors, "high voltage", "high current", and lots of voltage regulators (20 in the case of the Ref V). Also, they use Clarity caps, which are reported by others to be superb metallized film caps. No fancy hyper-expensive teflons or oil caps. Others whom I respect also tell me that bipolars are better sounding for phono amplification than are MOSFETs or JFETs. The RDTse, or whatever it's called, appears to be more useful for high output cartridges, as its gain can be reduced to 40db, whereas the Ref V minimum gain is 53db, aimed at low output MC cartridges.
Dcarol, You say the power supply is "integrated". Does this mean that the PS is on the same mono chassis as the phono circuit it supplies, in the case of the Ref V? Is the same true of the RDT, meaning there is no separated outboard PS chassis? (The photos on the website imply that this is the case, since no PS chassis is shown for either unit.)
Whest gets a lot of favorable comment, and I am interested in learning more.
