Hafler SE-130 (c. 1990)

Little is documented about the Hafler SE-130. What the record shows: it was one of four models in Hafler's SE Series launch of early 1990, advertised alongside the SE100 J-FET preamp, the 60W-per-channel SE120 MOSFET amplifier, and the SE150. Hafler's own ads — in Audio (March 1990, p.22, and again June 1990, p.46) and HiFI-Stereo (March 1990, p.82) — carried the line "Any way you look at it, Hafler advances the state of the art while it reduces the price of admission," and described the series as embodying innovative circuitry, high reliability, and above all sonic excellence at an affordable price. Those ads, however, say nothing specific about the SE-130 itself.

The one substantial equipment report in the SE-130's press file is from HiFI-Stereo (October 1990, p.54), and its content is unmistakably that of a tuner test: an auto-blend circuit that engaged below 40 dBf, reducing 1,000-Hz channel separation from roughly 40 dB at strong signal levels to 12 dB at 35 dBf and 4 dB at the weakest inputs. The surviving OCR of that page doesn't print the model name in the fragment we have, but the file attribution to the SE-130 is consistent with the SE-130 being Hafler's tuner in the SE line. Beyond that, no individual specification sheet for the SE-130 has surfaced. If you have a manual, brochure, or a clearly labeled review, it would genuinely fill a gap.