Hafler DH-110K
A preamp sold as a bag of parts and a schematic.
Overview
The DH-110K is the kit version of Hafler's DH-110 preamplifier, sold unassembled. The price gap between the two shows the idea behind it. Through mail-order dealers like Oxford Audio Consultants, the K version listed at $299.95 while the factory-wired DH-110A sat at $399.95. That's a hundred dollars saved for a weekend with a soldering iron. The assembled units carried a three-year warranty. The kits did not.
Prices drifted upward over the years, as they did across the whole Hafler line. By the mid-1980s the DH-110K was appearing at $360 through the same dealers, and by 1988 it had climbed to $375 and then $425 in some listings. A classified in Audio (November 1982, p.84) offered an unbuilt DH-110K paired with an unbuilt DH-200K for $525. Nothing in an unbuilt kit had been touched or botched, so it was a known quantity.
What the DH-110K actually contains is where the record gets thin. The available documentation is dealer advertising and classified listings rather than bench tests or spec sheets. The circuit topology, the phono stage design and the input complement are not confirmed in the sources at hand. What is confirmed is the pricing history and the kit-versus-assembled distinction. The DH-110 family was also stocked by specialists who carried Acoustat, Adcom, Carver, Klipsch, and Nakamichi.
The kit format has a particular appeal now that the original buyers are aging out of their systems. An unbuilt DH-110K is a time capsule — the bags of resistors, the bare board, the manual that walked you through it. A built one is a working preamp with a story. Either way, the buyer knew what they were getting into, and that's more than you can say for a lot of gear from the period.
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