Integrated amplifier | £549 | View offers whf.cm/Mission778X
Today, Mission is known as a specialist speaker manufacturer, but that wasn’t always the case. Back in the early ’80s, it was a far more diverse brand that made all parts of the audio chain from turntables, tonearms and cartridges to CD players, right through to speakers.
The company’s first amplifiers were hugely ambitious premium designs such as the 776/777 pre/power combination, but it wasn’t long before it produced a more affordable, though hardly less distinctive, integrated design called the 778. The 778 lasted only a few years before its design was evolved into the first products of Mission’s then-new sub-brand, Cyrus.
While that original 778 was well received, it is fair to say that the visually similar Cyrus One and Cyrus Two amplifiers went on to make a bigger