moe29 said:Yahoo! Driving Directions says it's only 2,500 miles from my place to SLC...
sure sounds like a lot of fun.
be sure to take lots of pics!
haha, I drove to SLC from Atlanta, GA once for winter break when I was in college (grew up in Utah and went there to go skiing). It took us 27 hours straight with 4 drivers alternating.
Hope the event goes well.
--
Brian
Banned
Joined 2002
Banned
Joined 2002
Mark A. Gulbrandsen said:
To make this shoot out more interesting, I think I will bring an Aleph mini with jfet front end to be more fair in comparison to Mark's zvp3310a mini Aleph version.
I only can probably hold one amp in my small trunk though, so what do folks want to compare in this shoot out? The mini A jfet or aleph 3 jfet version?
I will use the exact same front ends for both.
PS, I might be able to squeeze in my Krell KST-100 to compare with Mark's KSA-50 just for fun. No!!! Mark in advance!!! I am not decommisioning my Krell chassis for a KSA-50 project!!!
BillWW said:
To make this shoot out more interesting, I think I will bring an Aleph mini with jfet front end to be more fair in comparison to Mark's zvp3310a mini Aleph version.
I only can probably hold one amp in my small trunk though, so what do folks want to compare in this shoot out? The mini A jfet or aleph 3 jfet version?
I will use the exact same front ends for both.
PS, I might be able to squeeze in my Krell KST-100 to compare with Mark's KSA-50 just for fun. No!!! Mark in advance!!! I am not decommisioning my Krell chassis for a KSA-50 project!!!
I'll mail to ya my Babelfish J for shootout
Bill,
Doesn't that TDI Passat of yours have the 60/40 fold down back seat?
I would offer to bring your other amp in the back of my pick-up, but I am trying to lure Josh of electronluv.com, and perhaps Gary, Mr. Atma-Sphere of Salt Lake, both dyed in the wool tube men for this occasion.
And besides all those amps, whose going to man the Texas BBQ grill station? I can cover the microbrews, but don't let me near the charcoal
as I have a tendency to burn everything well enough for carbon dating.
Mark is working and being a rock hound in the deserts of Nevada this past week. He should be back in Bountiful this coming weekend.
Lyndon
Doesn't that TDI Passat of yours have the 60/40 fold down back seat?
I would offer to bring your other amp in the back of my pick-up, but I am trying to lure Josh of electronluv.com, and perhaps Gary, Mr. Atma-Sphere of Salt Lake, both dyed in the wool tube men for this occasion.
And besides all those amps, whose going to man the Texas BBQ grill station? I can cover the microbrews, but don't let me near the charcoal
as I have a tendency to burn everything well enough for carbon dating.
Mark is working and being a rock hound in the deserts of Nevada this past week. He should be back in Bountiful this coming weekend.
Lyndon
LuckyLyndy said:
Maybe, I can rebuild the amp to be smaller so that I can fit more in my trunk. I think the amps are so heavy, they might damage the interior of the fold down seats. I would feel safer for other options. I have some new heatsinks that I might rebuild the Aleph 3 and mini with, which would be more compact. I will have to get busy this weekend finish them up though. When each amp weighs at least 70 Lbs each, three amps sure do add up to a lot of weight!!!
Now if Todd brought his Adcoms 565 mono blocks over those would add up a lot more too.
But we would not want to smoke Mark's poor Dynaaudios. Today's the Day!!!
Well,
It looks like your typical, gorgeous day in the desert in Utah! Upper 60's Fahrenreit, 20 Celsius...the mountains along the Wasatch still have a sweet dusting of snow, in fact, most of the ski resorts are still busy with 100+ base, and we the HiFi Fools are getting to RUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMBLLLLLLLE!
Ooops, no turntables in this shootout. Gee, where's the wow and flutter, or as G. Bush Sr. would say, shock and awe???
Mark has been working on tweaking his 12b4 linestage, and I think he will have a new Pass Aleph 30 from Peter Daniel's boards ready, but I don't think he had time to slap together a new Mini-A from BrianGT's new boards, so we will only have the original on that one. BillW is planning on bringing his Aleph 3 Choky modified amp as well as two other flavors which I am not sure about. I couldn't get a response from Josh at Electronluv.com as I would have loved to hear one of the exotic tube amps that he builds thrown into this solid state love fest.
I also got 'no thanks' from two dealers, who realizing there wasn't a possible sale with a bunch of diy'ers, said they had better things to do with their time. Yeah, like one being the ONLY Rega dealer in the tri-state area, but not having one deck for audition. Instead he tells me I really should buy his Clear Audio Emotion deck, which is far superior to the Regas. Or the other dealer doing the same crapola, with being the only Pro-Ject dealer, but only having the SME Model 30 set up.
http://www.sme.ltd.uk/html/model30.html
Whoops, off topic.
Music from Mark and Bill and his brother will probably be biased for jazz and classical, though Mark is sure to pull out his special recording of some monster symphony organ to see how...far...the...bass...will...go...
I'm going to focus on small acoustic groups, either folk or bluegrass based, chamber music with cello and oboe, and female vocals, though if anybody pulls out Diana Krall or Patricia Barber, I may have to use some Jonestown Grape FlavorAid along with the tasty BBQ. (Black Humor here, please no flames from you Holier Than Thou types--instead, Google Theater of the Absurd, Kafka, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, etc.) Good grief, there is even a record company called that:
http://www.holierthanthourecords.com/index3.htm
Photo of the event will follow from Mark. We will play some Neil Young just for SY, since we all know he LOVES the Canadian Meister
Well,
It looks like your typical, gorgeous day in the desert in Utah! Upper 60's Fahrenreit, 20 Celsius...the mountains along the Wasatch still have a sweet dusting of snow, in fact, most of the ski resorts are still busy with 100+ base, and we the HiFi Fools are getting to RUMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMBLLLLLLLE!
Ooops, no turntables in this shootout. Gee, where's the wow and flutter, or as G. Bush Sr. would say, shock and awe???
Mark has been working on tweaking his 12b4 linestage, and I think he will have a new Pass Aleph 30 from Peter Daniel's boards ready, but I don't think he had time to slap together a new Mini-A from BrianGT's new boards, so we will only have the original on that one. BillW is planning on bringing his Aleph 3 Choky modified amp as well as two other flavors which I am not sure about. I couldn't get a response from Josh at Electronluv.com as I would have loved to hear one of the exotic tube amps that he builds thrown into this solid state love fest.
I also got 'no thanks' from two dealers, who realizing there wasn't a possible sale with a bunch of diy'ers, said they had better things to do with their time. Yeah, like one being the ONLY Rega dealer in the tri-state area, but not having one deck for audition. Instead he tells me I really should buy his Clear Audio Emotion deck, which is far superior to the Regas. Or the other dealer doing the same crapola, with being the only Pro-Ject dealer, but only having the SME Model 30 set up.
http://www.sme.ltd.uk/html/model30.html
Whoops, off topic.
Music from Mark and Bill and his brother will probably be biased for jazz and classical, though Mark is sure to pull out his special recording of some monster symphony organ to see how...far...the...bass...will...go...
I'm going to focus on small acoustic groups, either folk or bluegrass based, chamber music with cello and oboe, and female vocals, though if anybody pulls out Diana Krall or Patricia Barber, I may have to use some Jonestown Grape FlavorAid along with the tasty BBQ. (Black Humor here, please no flames from you Holier Than Thou types--instead, Google Theater of the Absurd, Kafka, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, etc.) Good grief, there is even a record company called that:
http://www.holierthanthourecords.com/index3.htm
Photo of the event will follow from Mark. We will play some Neil Young just for SY, since we all know he LOVES the Canadian Meister
Both excellent suggestions, Choky.
I'll post more later, but a good time was had by all. It was a smaller group, but things were improved greatly as diyaudio member Dave brought his A40 and a mystery amp.
Mark found the problems with his 12b4 linestage, and added our new regulated power supply to it (thanks Promitheus from Germany!). It took a while for the caps to set, but afterwards it performed dead silent. We just rotated amp after amp after amp through the system, and it was a situation like this that Mark probably wished for a remote control on his volume.
I liked the A40 of Dave's quite a bit. Very nice high end, and a wide soundstage. I would like him to chip in later and describe the tweaks he had done to it. The girl group Be Good Tanias really stood out on it.
We grilled 2 inch thick steaks, scooped up high quality German style potato salad, munched on Texas Toast, and various beverages were consumed under perfect Western skies.
Mark took some photos, and will post as soon as he cleans up that mess we left for the poor guy.
Muchas Gracias for the Mini A boards, Brian. Does the red color make it sound better?
Ciao, for now
Lyndon
I forgot to play the Neil Young, Sy, but they played Buffalo Springfield, CSN&Y, and Crazy Horse all day on the radio, as it was the anniversary of the Kent State Shootings, i.e. 'Ohio'
I'll post more later, but a good time was had by all. It was a smaller group, but things were improved greatly as diyaudio member Dave brought his A40 and a mystery amp.
Mark found the problems with his 12b4 linestage, and added our new regulated power supply to it (thanks Promitheus from Germany!). It took a while for the caps to set, but afterwards it performed dead silent. We just rotated amp after amp after amp through the system, and it was a situation like this that Mark probably wished for a remote control on his volume.
I liked the A40 of Dave's quite a bit. Very nice high end, and a wide soundstage. I would like him to chip in later and describe the tweaks he had done to it. The girl group Be Good Tanias really stood out on it.
We grilled 2 inch thick steaks, scooped up high quality German style potato salad, munched on Texas Toast, and various beverages were consumed under perfect Western skies.
Mark took some photos, and will post as soon as he cleans up that mess we left for the poor guy.
Muchas Gracias for the Mini A boards, Brian. Does the red color make it sound better?
Ciao, for now
Lyndon
I forgot to play the Neil Young, Sy, but they played Buffalo Springfield, CSN&Y, and Crazy Horse all day on the radio, as it was the anniversary of the Kent State Shootings, i.e. 'Ohio'
As Lundon said we all had a great time.... we've already planned to have another one in a couple of months time.
We compared 4 power amps this time around two Pass designs and two Krell designs. We had a MOSFET A-40 here that Mike W sent and Dave W's stock A-40 which is really more an A-30. The stock A-30 was a bit better than the MOSFET A-40 was the MOSFET version was a bit on the dry side starting in the modrange and up through the top end but the bottom end was better than the BP A-30 was . The BP A-30 clearly prodiced a better sound stage and had a more refined top end. Mike W has suggested that I try changing the feedback resistor and adjusting the bias in his MNOSFET version. I will do that for the next shoot out.
From there we went on to compare the KSA-50 MK-2 Klone and a stock Krell KST-100 class a/b job. Everyone thats been by my place knows the KSA-50's magnificent midrange and high end... and its hardly shabby bottom end....truely an amazing 50 watt amp... then comes along Bill WW's KST-100. Clearly the KST 100 had a much better bottom end and degree of slam that never seemed to fade out, it clearly left the KSA-50 behind in degree of slam. Track 1 from Crystal method really got my floor boards shakin and took everyone by surprise! The midrange on the KST-100 was not far behind the KSA-50 but the KSA-50 still leads there by a wide margin... the high end on the KST was a bit on the gritty side and somewhat cold sounding. Still for a class A/B amp from that audio era it was no slouch by any means.
The surprise amp at the shootout was a Magnavox 12 watt 6BQ5 based tube amp brought by Dave W. This was rescued from a Magnavox stereo console that Dave W. had salvaged from a local resale shop. The rest of the console went to the dump! The amp was in like new condition and Dave has re-done the back panel and added binding posts and nice RCA jack inputs. This is a very special power amp and took is all by surprice. Certainly its no competition for a large Krell but it had a magnificence of its own that I don't think any of us had expereinced... Its very unique, has a sound all its own, very clean, well detailed with a great soundstage. At normal listening levels it was alot of fun to try out!!
My winner for this shootout clearly is the Magnavox 12 wpc power amp
! I've never heard anyting quite like it...now I too will be stalking the local resale shops looking for one 
In the Photo: Dave W.'s Magnavox amp sits on top of his A-30 and in front of the MOSFET A-40. The Krell KSA-50 Mk-2 Klone is under the A-40.
Mark
We compared 4 power amps this time around two Pass designs and two Krell designs. We had a MOSFET A-40 here that Mike W sent and Dave W's stock A-40 which is really more an A-30. The stock A-30 was a bit better than the MOSFET A-40 was the MOSFET version was a bit on the dry side starting in the modrange and up through the top end but the bottom end was better than the BP A-30 was . The BP A-30 clearly prodiced a better sound stage and had a more refined top end. Mike W has suggested that I try changing the feedback resistor and adjusting the bias in his MNOSFET version. I will do that for the next shoot out.
From there we went on to compare the KSA-50 MK-2 Klone and a stock Krell KST-100 class a/b job. Everyone thats been by my place knows the KSA-50's magnificent midrange and high end... and its hardly shabby bottom end....truely an amazing 50 watt amp... then comes along Bill WW's KST-100. Clearly the KST 100 had a much better bottom end and degree of slam that never seemed to fade out, it clearly left the KSA-50 behind in degree of slam. Track 1 from Crystal method really got my floor boards shakin and took everyone by surprise! The midrange on the KST-100 was not far behind the KSA-50 but the KSA-50 still leads there by a wide margin... the high end on the KST was a bit on the gritty side and somewhat cold sounding. Still for a class A/B amp from that audio era it was no slouch by any means.
The surprise amp at the shootout was a Magnavox 12 watt 6BQ5 based tube amp brought by Dave W. This was rescued from a Magnavox stereo console that Dave W. had salvaged from a local resale shop. The rest of the console went to the dump! The amp was in like new condition and Dave has re-done the back panel and added binding posts and nice RCA jack inputs. This is a very special power amp and took is all by surprice. Certainly its no competition for a large Krell but it had a magnificence of its own that I don't think any of us had expereinced... Its very unique, has a sound all its own, very clean, well detailed with a great soundstage. At normal listening levels it was alot of fun to try out!!
My winner for this shootout clearly is the Magnavox 12 wpc power amp
! I've never heard anyting quite like it...now I too will be stalking the local resale shops looking for one In the Photo: Dave W.'s Magnavox amp sits on top of his A-30 and in front of the MOSFET A-40. The Krell KSA-50 Mk-2 Klone is under the A-40.
Mark
Attachments
GTG
Well, I was not able to bring the Aleph 3 or mini with jfet front ends.
I lost one channel due to trying to get too much done in a couple of days. I will have to work on that and maybe this coming Saturday bring it by Mark's place.
I did bring the Krell KST-100 though to compare against the KSA-50. The KST-100 had the best bass, which surprised me, because on my corner horns, it seemed to lack the low bass that Mark's dynaudio had. The only thing I can figure is the Krell must have too much control of the bass horn woofer making it lose the low bass on my horn. The Aleph 3 seemed to have better bass on my horn most likely due to less dampening, which allows the woofer to go lower.
Dave brought over an original A40 and Magnavox pentode amp. i was surprised by his Magnavox, because it had pretty good highs for a tube amp. It did not seem to be rolled in the highs.
I really liked the finish of Mike's A40. It ran pretty hot for how big those heat sinks were.
I really liked the Krells the best on Mark's speakers. Some how they just sound really nice on his Dynaudios. His KSA-50 had a very nice midrange compared to my KST-100. My KST-100 seemed to be more neutral with still great highs but better lows than the KSA-50, but did not sound as smooth as the KSA-50 due to the 100's AB design. But it still was an excellent amp.
I was greatly disappointed that I was not able to bring my Aleph 3 with jfet front end. I have a lot of work ahead of me figuring out what is wrong with my left channel. I suspect a bad output mosfet, which I plan on pulling all of them to check on my mosfet test voltage rig. If that does not solve the problem, I have so far installed sockets for all of my transistors on the Aleph board, so that I do not have to keep soldering and desoldering FETs. I should be able to pull all of the FETs out and check the resister values for any that may have been partially damaged on their values.
Dave's original A40 used a jfet for a current source. His reminded me of my Aleph 3, which I am also using a jfet current source, which seemed to sound the most similar to Dave's tube pentode amp.
I wished I had my Aleph 3 with jfet front end to compare directly, but so far I have concluded jfet amps seem to sound very similar to the tube amp that I heard over at Mark's. I think for future projects, I am going to use jfets!!! They are very musical!!!
All of the amps had their pros and cons there. My Krell had the most authority and still sounded very nice for an AB amp. I would like to try biasing it harder, because frankly it is the most cool running Krell that I have ever listened to. It could easily handle more biasing. Mark now seems even more determined to build a KSA-100.
I still think the Aleph 3 with jfet front end sounded better than the A40 or Pentode, but I can not truly verify that, since I did not have it available. I would really like Dave to bring the tube amp back one more time to compare with my Aleph 3 jfet version, since his tube amp seemed hard to beat in the highs. Off the top of my memory, I felt my Aleph 3 sounded similar, but may have had even a more romanticized tube sound than the pentode. Mine reminded me more of triodes included in a very velveted bass before I lost my left channel.
Bill
Well, I was not able to bring the Aleph 3 or mini with jfet front ends.
I lost one channel due to trying to get too much done in a couple of days. I will have to work on that and maybe this coming Saturday bring it by Mark's place.
I did bring the Krell KST-100 though to compare against the KSA-50. The KST-100 had the best bass, which surprised me, because on my corner horns, it seemed to lack the low bass that Mark's dynaudio had. The only thing I can figure is the Krell must have too much control of the bass horn woofer making it lose the low bass on my horn. The Aleph 3 seemed to have better bass on my horn most likely due to less dampening, which allows the woofer to go lower.
Dave brought over an original A40 and Magnavox pentode amp. i was surprised by his Magnavox, because it had pretty good highs for a tube amp. It did not seem to be rolled in the highs.
I really liked the finish of Mike's A40. It ran pretty hot for how big those heat sinks were.
I really liked the Krells the best on Mark's speakers. Some how they just sound really nice on his Dynaudios. His KSA-50 had a very nice midrange compared to my KST-100. My KST-100 seemed to be more neutral with still great highs but better lows than the KSA-50, but did not sound as smooth as the KSA-50 due to the 100's AB design. But it still was an excellent amp.
I was greatly disappointed that I was not able to bring my Aleph 3 with jfet front end. I have a lot of work ahead of me figuring out what is wrong with my left channel. I suspect a bad output mosfet, which I plan on pulling all of them to check on my mosfet test voltage rig. If that does not solve the problem, I have so far installed sockets for all of my transistors on the Aleph board, so that I do not have to keep soldering and desoldering FETs. I should be able to pull all of the FETs out and check the resister values for any that may have been partially damaged on their values.
Dave's original A40 used a jfet for a current source. His reminded me of my Aleph 3, which I am also using a jfet current source, which seemed to sound the most similar to Dave's tube pentode amp.
I wished I had my Aleph 3 with jfet front end to compare directly, but so far I have concluded jfet amps seem to sound very similar to the tube amp that I heard over at Mark's. I think for future projects, I am going to use jfets!!! They are very musical!!!
All of the amps had their pros and cons there. My Krell had the most authority and still sounded very nice for an AB amp. I would like to try biasing it harder, because frankly it is the most cool running Krell that I have ever listened to. It could easily handle more biasing. Mark now seems even more determined to build a KSA-100.
I still think the Aleph 3 with jfet front end sounded better than the A40 or Pentode, but I can not truly verify that, since I did not have it available. I would really like Dave to bring the tube amp back one more time to compare with my Aleph 3 jfet version, since his tube amp seemed hard to beat in the highs. Off the top of my memory, I felt my Aleph 3 sounded similar, but may have had even a more romanticized tube sound than the pentode. Mine reminded me more of triodes included in a very velveted bass before I lost my left channel.
Bill
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