Shindo’s third-least-expensive amp

Only recently did I learn that successive generations of the Chevrolet Corvette are referred to by the cognoscenti with two-character alpha-numeric identifiers: C1, C2, C3, and so on. I learned this while reading about the most recent version—C8, known to non-cognoscenti as the 2020 Corvette—which happens to be the first version since C2 that impresses me. (I say that as one who used to work for the owner of a C3, a then-middle-aged male who actually boasted, while under the influence, that he and two of his C3-owning friends drove them solely because their juvenile styling attracted juveniles. Rest assured I left his employ within days of that revelation.)

In most ways, the Shindo Cortese power amplifier ($13,500 with F2a output tubes) is as far from an audio Corvette as one can get. It is modestly powered, its build quality is in tune with its luxury-goods price tag, and its styling is the very soul of mature understatement. Yet it, too, has gone through a number of versions, evidence of which hides behind the amp’s modestly-sized casework.

The late Ken Shindo, who founded Shindo Laboratory in 1977, was also known for his distinctive model designations—some are the names of rare wines, some are musical terms, at least one is a woman’s name—which he recycled from time to time. Thus Haut-Brion has been both a KT88-powered monoblock and a 6L6-powered stereo amp, Petrus has been both a two-box and a single-box preamplifier, and so forth. But as far as I know, Cortese has always been a stereo, single-ended amplifier priced near the budget end of the Shindo line.

The Cortese is known by most Shindo enthusiasts in the US—which is to say those who’ve come on board since 2003, when Tone Imports introduced the brand to North America—as a single-ended amplifier that uses one F2a power