Chord’s modular amps are like Lego for your ears

Chord has launched its highly anticipated modular amp and preamp, the Chord Suzi Amp and the Chord Suzi Pre. They've been a long time coming, having been revealed at the High End Munich show a year ago.

To say they have a distinctive design would be an understatement: from some angles I think they look like they were made by Nintendo.

And while you can use them on their own, they've been made to work with one another and Chord's other rather quirky-looking components. It's like Lego for high-end audio enthusiasts.

Introduction to Suzi Pre and Suzi Amp - YouTube

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As well as use the Amp and Pre together, you can also combine them both with other Chord products. So, you can put the Suzi Amp with the Hugo 2 DAC, or with the Hugo 2 and Chord 2go streamer.

We rate Chord very highly for both its sound expertise and design flair. We raved about its Mojo 2 DAC and headphone amp, for example, and loved the striking looks of the flagship Ultima amp. Tech from that latter amplifier has now trickled down to the much more affordable Suzi.

Chord Suzi Pre and Amp: key features and pricing

The Chord Suzi Pre is a preamp with its own MM/MC phono stage and selectable impedance and gain. It has 3.5mm and 6.35mm headphone outputs, three RCA inputs, one RCA output and a 12V DC output. The glowing, coloured sphere in the middle is the controller for volume and input selection.

The Suzi Amp has Chord's Ultima amplification and puts out 30W in stereo (8 ohms). There are 4mm banana loudspeaker outputs, RCA inputs and a removable solid aluminium cover block that you can remove to add the Suzi Pre or Hugo 2.

Both products are available now. The Chord Suzi Pre is £1,995 / $3,145 (about €2,340 / AU$4,163) and the Chord Suzi Amp is £3,400 / $5,035 (about €3,987 / AU$7,095).