Hafler DH-220K
A power amplifier sold as a kit for the price of a good cartridge, and the classifieds never let it go quietly.
Overview
The DH-220K is the kit form of Hafler's DH-220 power amplifier. The "K" means it arrived as a box of parts instead of a finished chassis. Dealer listings in the audio press priced the kit at $349.95 in 1983 and $400 by the middle of the decade. Those figures show up repeatedly in the classified pages of Audio (June 1983, p.105), where a DH-220K and a DH-110K preamp were advertised together as a $550 pair. The same pairing keeps turning up in the back pages of that publication.
The DH-220K sat at the entry point of Hafler's power-amp line, below the factory-assembled DH-220A and well below the DH-500. Dealer advertisements from the period list the kit at $349.95 against $449.95 for the assembled DH-220A. That hundred-dollar gap was the reason the kit existed. Buyers who could solder saved real money, and buyers who couldn't paid Hafler to do it. The same dealer copy notes a three-year warranty on assembled units. The kit itself was a build-it-yourself proposition, and the warranty language in the ads consistently attaches to the factory-built versions.
The DH-220K replaced the DH-200. Dealer advertising from 1983 describes the DH-220 as "replacing the DH-200" and frames it as a reinforcement of David Hafler's design philosophy - the same plain-box, high-value approach that made the brand's kit amplifiers a fixture of the hobby. The DH-220K is that amplifier in its most affordable form.
Collectors and builders note that the condition of any surviving DH-220K depends heavily on who assembled it and how carefully. A well-built one is a legitimate piece of Hafler engineering. A sloppy one is a repair project. The classifieds of the era treated the DH-220K as a commodity. It turns up for sale constantly, often bundled with a matching preamp, and rarely commands the attention of the assembled units.
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