Although Eastern European brands are growing in number, to the best of our knowledge, Edgar is the only hi-fi company that designs and builds its products in Slovakia.

Edgar produces a small but distinctive range of valve-powered components. These include an all-valve phono stage with Lundahl step-up transformers for moving coil cartridges, a CD player and an open-chassis integrated amplifier with a higher (50 watt) output power than the TP105VR here, but without the remote volume control.

Being an all-tube design, the glowing cherry exterior of the TP105VR is neatly complimented by the warm tones produced inside. The amp runs pretty hot, thanks to full valve rectification and four EL34 pentode output tubes operating in ultralinear (push-pull) mode. Valve purists won't need any other source of heat in the listening room while this is running!

The Edgar's classic configuration reminds us of the Audio Innovations Series 500 from the late 1980s, even though its roots go back a generation further - to the 1950s, when the pentode came to pre-eminence as the output device that offered the most power and least distortion of its time.

In the Edgar, the input signal is sent to the volume control and then to the first gain-stage, a 12AX7 triode. The second stage is an ECC81 valve, which inverts phase before the final and most powerful gain stage; a pair of EL34s in push-pull configuration. Between here and the output taps is an output transformer that reduces the high output impedance of the valves to something that can drive loudspeakers.

In the realm of reasonably priced integrated valve amps, full thermionic power supply rectification is quite a rarity. This is because the job can be done rather more economically with solid-state devices. For the purist, however, this approach is the only true way.

The TP105VR comes equipped with a remote control that also incorporates cherry wood and is more attractive than the usual mass-produced plastic variety, although its appeal lessened when it stopped working shortly after delivery!

The speaker terminals come in four and eight ohm versions, which represent alternative tappings from the output transformer. As speakers rarely have a fixed impedance it's best to experiment with these to see which gives the highest output level.

We didn't find a big difference between the two when using the Living Voice OBX-R speaker, but this isn't always the case. Inputs include five line-level phono pairs, plus a tape output.

Having failed to fix the remote handset, we went back to basics and got off the couch to use the TP105VR, which seemed entirely appropriate given that the product is based on 1950s technology.

The first speaker we gave the amp to drive was a slightly unusual one: the Piega TC70X. It's unusual in part because it costs a lot more than the amplifier (£8,500), but in the main because it has a coaxial ribbon tweeter and midrange driver. The Piega is specified as being 92dB at four ohms, however, and thus not too bad a load.

In fact, the Edgar seems quite at home with the Piega, delivering an appealingly quiet background against which it painted some highly articulate sounds. It seems a little rolled off at high frequencies - or perhaps it's just soft - but this doesn't stop it recreating the full body of a piano or the power of a singer's voice.