Bottlehead Paramount Question

[needtubes]

Has anyone had experience with this amp? There is very little information on the net about the Paramount. I am in the market for a tube amp, but cannot decide to drop $1500 on these amps without some indication that they hold their weight...

I am wanting to try out a SET amp (300b, KT88) with my setup, but the Paramounts worry me since they are parafeed output instead of a true SET. I've not seen any comparisons between the Paramounts and true SET amplifiers - should they sound similar?

Thanks

[Defiant]

Parafeeds will sound similar, but not identical. They have certain advantages and disadvantages. The concept of parafeed is to eliminate the standing magnetic flux in the transformer core, which means you no longer need a gapped core with it's resultant lower inductance and higher leakage inductance. In reality, it simply moves this effect over to the plate choke and adds a large capacitor in the signal path. Also, while the magnetic bias does have certain disadvantages, it has a big advantage as well: the transformer no longer operates in the highly nonlinear region of the B-H curve. I think this is a big reason why SE's are so clean and detailed at very low power levels.

[rock4016]

Check out the bottlehead forum.
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There are several Bottlehead groups around the country that have regular meetings. You could attend one and listen to what the members bring. I've been to several and I found it is the best way to hear lots of bottlehead products at one time.