Hafler DH-100A
A preamp that sold for two hundred bucks and change, and the mail-order ads never stopped arguing about the exact number.
Overview
The DH-100A turns up in the classified pages of every audio magazine of the mid-1980s, usually buried in a dealer's "we stock all of the following" block. The surviving documentation makes one thing clear: the DH-100A was the factory-assembled version of Hafler's budget preamp. The "A" suffix set it apart from the "K" kit form, the DH-100K. Buyers who didn't want to wield a soldering iron paid the premium for a finished unit, and the assembled version carried a three-year warranty, which the dealer ads were careful to mention.
Pricing is where the record gets slippery. The DH-100A was listed at $225 in Audio (September 1985, p.121) and again in Audio (December 1986, p.159). It was the same dealer listing, running with minor variations across several years of the magazine. The kit version tracked alongside it: $149.95 in 1984, $175 by 1985-86. Whether that $199.95-to-$225 drift is a real price increase or a dealer updating his ad copy, the surviving pages don't say. What is clear is that the DH-100A sat at the bottom of Hafler's preamp ladder, well under the DH-110A at $399.95 - $440 and the DH-101A at $299.95.
The dealer stock lists that ran through the mid-1980s confirm where the DH-100A sat in the lineup. It appears consistently alongside the DH-110, the DH-160, the DH-220 and DH-500 power amps, the DH-330 tuner, and the DH-112 equalizer. A budget-minded audiophile could assemble these into a full Hafler system, and the DH-100A was the entry ticket.
At least one dealer was blowing out the DH-100A at $159, according to a classified in Audio (1986). That is below the kit price, which suggests the model was being cleared as the lineup moved on.
The documentation does not give the circuit itself. There are no confirmed specifications for the DH-100A in the available record - no gain figures, no RIAA accuracy, no distortion numbers, no dimensions. Anyone looking for a schematic will need to track down the original Hafler documentation, because the magazine record here is advertising and classifieds, not bench tests.
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