Just in case you were wondering, there really is a man named Jeff Rowland, and he not only still owns the Jeff Rowland Design Group, but also, after nearly 50 years, he still works there almost every day. Indeed, he actually walks to work because his home is only around 500 metres from the factory in Colorado Springs, where Rowland says all Jeff Rowland products are made, almost in their entirety. Almost?
“All of our products since the beginning have been produced in our own facility in Colorado Springs, Colorado, United States, ” says Rowland. “All of the chassis manufacturing takes place there, and all of the products are machined from solid-build aluminium. Since the chassis work is heavy, it has to be produced locally, within a couple of miles of our assembly line.”
“Board assembly for the amplifiers is done either in-house or at a contracted manufacturer close to our factory, who we have been doing business with since 1990, ” he adds. “Most of our components are sourced from standard local electronics manufacturers, with the exception of some of our components which have to be sourced from countries such as Sweden, Denmark and Japan. Assembly is entirely at our headquarters though, without exception.”
THE EQUIPMENT
I had done some homework on the Jeff Rowland Continuum S2 before my loaner sample was delivered to me for review and knew that it used both a solid-state switchmode power supply (SMPS), rather than a conventional toroidal power transformer, and also a Class-D output stage (about which more later, because it’s an unusual one) instead of a conventional linear Class- AB output stage, so when the amplifier was delivered to me, the size of the shipping carton (560×620×330mm) it came in — and the weight of it — took me rather by surprise.
As it turned out, most of the size of the carton was due to excellent packaging, because the Jeff Rowland Continuum S2 is quite petite, at 135×394×380mm (HWD). But the weight remained virtually unchanged, with the amplifier tipping my home scales at 15.9kg. I was flummoxed. No power transformer… no heatsinks, where could all that weight be coming from?
The answer became apparent from the moment I unscrewed the six hex-headed bolts that hold the top cover in place. In so doing, I also instantly knew that this Jeff Rowland Continuum S2 was built in the USA, because my metric hex set wouldn’t fit. I instead had to use my Imperial set. Is the US ever going to realise the advantages of the metric system?
It turns out that the amplifier’s entire weight is the chassis itself, which is constructed almost entirely of solid aluminium. Really, really thick and solid aluminium. No wonder Rowland uses a nearby factory to produce the chassis!
The top, side and rear panels of the Continuum S2 are 9mm thick. The sides are 23mm thick! The front panel is even thicker again — a solid block of 34mm-thick alloy whose central section has been CNC-routed to enable the front panel’s display, volume control and LEDs to be mounted in it. And that’s not all. In the centre of
