The ECLL800s that this particular amp uses are even rarer. An entire PP amp in a single tube. 7W might be optimistic.
http://www.jogis-roehrenbude.de/Roehren-Geschichtliches/Stereodekoder/Grundig/Dekoder_VI/SM-300.pdf
This unit is worth restoring (or at least bringing back to useful condition) just to preserve the natural habitat of the output stage. And then use it for a bit (line in -- if you can directly feed the ECC83 you'll essentially be using the power amps stage). If it doesn't cut it in the hifi long-term it would make a great amp for your office or computer.
On Sunday we were auditioning another ML-TL variation for the A10.2. My main system is running a 5th string amp, so Bernie brought his 2A3SE (3.5W). My room is much bigger than yours, and we got away with it. At times we were wishing for more power, but in a smaller room, being careful with the levels, you might be fine.
dave
Attachments
At some level, I'm not even sure why there's a discussion here! Plug it in and see!
It is not like you can actually "harm" your speakers by not having enough driving power to cause the paint to flake off the walls, and the cats to run screaming from the dorm!
Also ... like ... is anyone going to remember that there is DOUBLE the power with both a left and right channel? Reasonable estimates of output levels have to be raised a notch here, folks.
Let's see ... Placing your speakers in the right configuration (horrors... in corners... old 1970s way to double sound-pressure apparent at the listener's positions) ... got another way toward getting you there.
To the dude that said, "but Beethoven's 5th won't 'roar'", I counter this - the last time I was sitting in the symphony hall listening, I was in 2nd tier, with a 90 piece orchestra ... where the average instrumentalist was able, maximum, to put out 20 watts of sound, with the drummers, trombones, tubas putting out another 250 watts, and the pipe organ maybe chiming in with another 3,000 watts. That's about 6,000 total acoustic watts of sonic goodness. From my seat, conservatively 25 meters from the action, with a soft wall and so on, I'd bet that the sound-pressure wasn't even close to 100 dB, at the crescendo. More like a respectable 90. Yet, it was the listening CONDITIONS that made for the special performance. Lastly ... like the Grundig was ... designed to "produce enough", dig? So, dig! Get 'er hooked up and see what she does!
Whatcha waiting for boyee!
GoatGuy
It is not like you can actually "harm" your speakers by not having enough driving power to cause the paint to flake off the walls, and the cats to run screaming from the dorm!
Also ... like ... is anyone going to remember that there is DOUBLE the power with both a left and right channel? Reasonable estimates of output levels have to be raised a notch here, folks.
Let's see ... Placing your speakers in the right configuration (horrors... in corners... old 1970s way to double sound-pressure apparent at the listener's positions) ... got another way toward getting you there.
To the dude that said, "but Beethoven's 5th won't 'roar'", I counter this - the last time I was sitting in the symphony hall listening, I was in 2nd tier, with a 90 piece orchestra ... where the average instrumentalist was able, maximum, to put out 20 watts of sound, with the drummers, trombones, tubas putting out another 250 watts, and the pipe organ maybe chiming in with another 3,000 watts. That's about 6,000 total acoustic watts of sonic goodness. From my seat, conservatively 25 meters from the action, with a soft wall and so on, I'd bet that the sound-pressure wasn't even close to 100 dB, at the crescendo. More like a respectable 90. Yet, it was the listening CONDITIONS that made for the special performance. Lastly ... like the Grundig was ... designed to "produce enough", dig? So, dig! Get 'er hooked up and see what she does!
Whatcha waiting for boyee!
GoatGuy
ECLL800! The old eyes fooled me.
ECLL800 = 6KL8. RES has a listing for the 6KL8 @$60/tube. Whether or not they actually have stock is TBD.
The PDF Dave linked shows the unit to have a pair of DIN connectors. I also saw a reference to "tonenband", which means mag. tape. I'll venture a guess and say tape recorder connections are available. The tape recorder I/P rates to be usable, with appropriate cabling, in combination with a CDP.
ECLL800 = 6KL8. RES has a listing for the 6KL8 @$60/tube. Whether or not they actually have stock is TBD.
The PDF Dave linked shows the unit to have a pair of DIN connectors. I also saw a reference to "tonenband", which means mag. tape. I'll venture a guess and say tape recorder connections are available. The tape recorder I/P rates to be usable, with appropriate cabling, in combination with a CDP.
GoatGuy,
Simply plugging the unit in and turning it on is the LAST thing to do. The old, dried out, 'lytics need to be replaced. After all electrolytic caps. are replaced, either a variac or the "lightbulb trick" to slowly bring the voltage up is in order. Simply turning the unit on could easily destroy it!
Simply plugging the unit in and turning it on is the LAST thing to do. The old, dried out, 'lytics need to be replaced. After all electrolytic caps. are replaced, either a variac or the "lightbulb trick" to slowly bring the voltage up is in order. Simply turning the unit on could easily destroy it!
Oh, boo. Where's your sense of adventure? There's something exciting about plugging in an old amp (no load, no source) and powering it up to see if it goes "pop". 95% don't. I know - I've plugged in dozens and dozens over the years. Surprisingly durable, actually - and the older the more durable. The "dried out" electrolytics just aren't much in the way of capacitors, and the whole set just buzzes. Again, harmless. Even if they were to short out, that's what the good ol' fuse is for. I tell you, these young people. Afraid of their own shadows.
Supposing it does work on power up? (Which given Grundig's general German Insistance for doing things "right" and somewhat "overbuilt", seems like a good bet) ... well, then a few hours, days, years of music is what is the immediate benefit. If not, then there's some a-fixing to do. WHICH one would be doing anyway, per the advice to mince-forth with utmost caution. Again, almost nothing I've ever seen flashes to ash and Hell and ruin. OCCASIONALLY it does, but again... so what.
Stand back Lads! This ol' box of bulbs hasn't seen the Good Stuff from the Edison company for decades! Might want to shot a few fireworks our direction!
GoatGuy ... chuckling off to bed
Supposing it does work on power up? (Which given Grundig's general German Insistance for doing things "right" and somewhat "overbuilt", seems like a good bet) ... well, then a few hours, days, years of music is what is the immediate benefit. If not, then there's some a-fixing to do. WHICH one would be doing anyway, per the advice to mince-forth with utmost caution. Again, almost nothing I've ever seen flashes to ash and Hell and ruin. OCCASIONALLY it does, but again... so what.
Stand back Lads! This ol' box of bulbs hasn't seen the Good Stuff from the Edison company for decades! Might want to shot a few fireworks our direction!
GoatGuy ... chuckling off to bed
I think that you will need to try it for yourself to find how the truth is for you.
I've run PSE 2A3, and PP 2A3 with 90dB speakers and its been way more than loud enough. Speaker impedance, room effects.. hard to model simply - because its not a simple model.
Hey, you have the amps available.. go and try it.
I've run PSE 2A3, and PP 2A3 with 90dB speakers and its been way more than loud enough. Speaker impedance, room effects.. hard to model simply - because its not a simple model.
Hey, you have the amps available.. go and try it.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/markaudio/177064-alpair-10-gen-2-introduction.html
Perhaps this is relevant.
Looks like an easy speaker to drive and the impedance is mostly above 8 ohms.
Having said that my experience is that tube amps sound best playing much below their limits. So I think you would probably get some satisfying volumes in a small to medium room but if this will be good sounding is another matter. You can whip up a chipamp and see if it sounds better.
Perhaps this is relevant.
Looks like an easy speaker to drive and the impedance is mostly above 8 ohms.
Having said that my experience is that tube amps sound best playing much below their limits. So I think you would probably get some satisfying volumes in a small to medium room but if this will be good sounding is another matter. You can whip up a chipamp and see if it sounds better.
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Seems to be a lot of agonizing over nothing to me.
Back in the day before the "internets" we would have just plugged the thing in and listened. Although we probably would have hooked it up to those factory car stereo speakers laying without an enclosure we took out of the car when we bought new 6x9's for the back deck, just to be safe on first startup that there were no weird noises coming out of the amp.
That would have taken about an hour, instead of the two days you've already invested into this question.
You say your neighbours would complain if the SPL was above 90dB or so.
Is your TV capable of going "too loud" for the neighbours? Then this amp will be loud enough.
If your source is modern digital music (anything from a CD of 1984 to something made now) you need about 13dB of headroom.
If it were a solid state amp, you would need enough power to handle that headroom above your average listening level as a minimum. Since it's a tube amp, you will probably need much less power. 10% THD doesn't sound that bad when the next watt is 11% (vacuum state), it sounds considerably worse when the next watt is 80% (solid state). With the tube amp you will hear the dynamic compression as it runs out of steam and not much else, the average level will still go higher, and your neighbours will start knocking on the walls.
My guess is you will need perhaps 2 watts continuous to reach 90 dB average SPL The 7W tube amp may be going into clipping at that average level but probably all you will want to do it turn it down the slightest amount. Many people would not even want to do that. With a SS amp, you would need about 30 watts to maintain that average SPL (assuming my 2W estimate is correct).
I know one thing ... whatever condition the amp is in now, sitting in your Uncle's attic, it wont' be in any better condition a year from now sitting in your Uncle's attic. So fire it up. while you still can, and find out what's what.
The thing was built with care, and to make music. Don't torture it any longer in the sensory deprivation chamber. Plug it in and give it a job to do. It will reward you with an honest day's work if it's capable of working at all.
Back in the day before the "internets" we would have just plugged the thing in and listened. Although we probably would have hooked it up to those factory car stereo speakers laying without an enclosure we took out of the car when we bought new 6x9's for the back deck, just to be safe on first startup that there were no weird noises coming out of the amp.
That would have taken about an hour, instead of the two days you've already invested into this question.
You say your neighbours would complain if the SPL was above 90dB or so.
Is your TV capable of going "too loud" for the neighbours? Then this amp will be loud enough.
If your source is modern digital music (anything from a CD of 1984 to something made now) you need about 13dB of headroom.
If it were a solid state amp, you would need enough power to handle that headroom above your average listening level as a minimum. Since it's a tube amp, you will probably need much less power. 10% THD doesn't sound that bad when the next watt is 11% (vacuum state), it sounds considerably worse when the next watt is 80% (solid state). With the tube amp you will hear the dynamic compression as it runs out of steam and not much else, the average level will still go higher, and your neighbours will start knocking on the walls.
My guess is you will need perhaps 2 watts continuous to reach 90 dB average SPL The 7W tube amp may be going into clipping at that average level but probably all you will want to do it turn it down the slightest amount. Many people would not even want to do that. With a SS amp, you would need about 30 watts to maintain that average SPL (assuming my 2W estimate is correct).
I know one thing ... whatever condition the amp is in now, sitting in your Uncle's attic, it wont' be in any better condition a year from now sitting in your Uncle's attic. So fire it up. while you still can, and find out what's what.
The thing was built with care, and to make music. Don't torture it any longer in the sensory deprivation chamber. Plug it in and give it a job to do. It will reward you with an honest day's work if it's capable of working at all.
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Trouble is the amp is 750 miles away
. And I don't have the speakers to try it with. I am basically wondering if I should change the speaker design I was planning on building. If it were close by I would defiantly give it a try.And no worries about it blowing up. It worked just a couple years ago with my Dads speakers (he used it for about a year). I know his speakers are more efficient/sensitive than the ones I was planning on building, so I wanted to make sure it would work with the alpair 10s. The other option would be to change the speaker design.
It sounds like I will give it a try, though. If it does not work well, I might just make some computer speakers for the bedroom that are specifically designed for this amp.
My ears ring for hours without loud music...no interest in damaging them further.
I tend not to crank rock music, so I find 70-75db comfortable and solid in a modest room. 80db is pretty loud, enough for me to feel like i am "rocking out" and 90db unpleasant. 100db hurts and bothers the folks next door.
But the ask others, they need to crank it to 11...it's your ears, see if it works.
Hi there,
for my average listening, a small PP amp in the 10W range works fine with a pair of insensitive KEF iQ3 bookshelf speaker (89dB-2.83V/1m). Loud enough that my better half turns it down after a few minutes every time.
As a side note: ECLL800 can be bought for around 20 Euros from some German vendors. They seem to have them in stock. Shipping might be expensive?!?
Cheers,
Martin
for my average listening, a small PP amp in the 10W range works fine with a pair of insensitive KEF iQ3 bookshelf speaker (89dB-2.83V/1m). Loud enough that my better half turns it down after a few minutes every time.
As a side note: ECLL800 can be bought for around 20 Euros from some German vendors. They seem to have them in stock. Shipping might be expensive?!?
Cheers,
Martin
Trouble is the amp is 750 miles away
And no worries about it blowing up. It worked just a couple years ago with my Dads speakers (he used it for about a year). I know his speakers are more efficient/sensitive than the ones I was planning on building, so I wanted to make sure it would work with the alpair 10s. The other option would be to change the speaker design.
It sounds like I will give it a try, though. If it does not work well, I might just make some computer speakers for the bedroom that are specifically designed for this amp.
Absolutely try it. I suspect you will not be disappointed.
When I said you need about 13dB headroom, that's from experience transcribing CDs to maintain similar average perceived loudness without digital clipping, on files that were Pre-digital LPs and released on CD during the 80's, while at the same time working with digital transcriptions I made myself from LP, and throwing them all into the same digital music library.
Those early commercial disks ended up on CD without much processing in re-master. The range would be typically average normalizing in the order of -10~14 dB if all you wanted was eliminating digital clipping, a similar value to the transcriptions I made myself.
So, normalizing everything at -13dB made average loudness equal on all tracks in the library.
Occasionally you would find one or three clipped samples at that level, so -14dB average then. In this way each song sounded roughly the same volume when randomly playing tracks.
With modern CDs you are lucky if -6dB average gives you zero clipped samples ... -3dB is common, and there are CDs out there that have dynamic range of merely 1dB. The average level IS the peak level.
So your 2watt average listening level might only involve peak power of 6 watts with contemporary music. You won't even see the 1% THD value in that tube amp under those conditions and an average SPL of 2 watts, even on program peaks, unless you start playing LPs through it.
It's an interesting quirk of the modern digital music production workflow. In 2013, a tube amp is more suited to playing contemporary CDs and other digital files than it was in 1965 playing LPs ... it will play louder, cleaner today on modern music than it could 50 years ago on music available at that time. Even the AM broadcasts had more dynamic range then than a modern CD.
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This may not be even remotely close to what is considered an "audiophile" amplifier, but ... if you just need a completely bomb-proof, and remarkably well designed, well behaved and smooth-as-glass compensated AB amp, find a used ALESYS RA-100 on Ebay. $99 (originally over $600, and that was 20 years ago!)
On a hunch having found a hand-drawn copy of the schematic, I bought one a few years ago. It was great! Installed it in our portable-box church system. Almost enough by itself for a pretty huge church, playing sing-along christian music. But... we had plans for more speakers in more strategic locations, and to smooth out the sound pressure level from front to back. So... bought another 3 of them! All of them $99 or so. Built a rollable-rack out of hardwood-ply, placed a nice used Yamaha 01V digital mixer on top, got a quad of stereo graphic equalizers (to compensate the 8 inputs for the particular speakers/placement they were in), and hooked it all up. Wow! Even at "2/3 knob" volume, the whole church was totally filled. Almost always got as many compliments for the music as guarded complaints that we were a little bit loud. LOL.
Point is - the RA100 is a gem in the rough.
GoatGuy
On a hunch having found a hand-drawn copy of the schematic, I bought one a few years ago. It was great! Installed it in our portable-box church system. Almost enough by itself for a pretty huge church, playing sing-along christian music. But... we had plans for more speakers in more strategic locations, and to smooth out the sound pressure level from front to back. So... bought another 3 of them! All of them $99 or so. Built a rollable-rack out of hardwood-ply, placed a nice used Yamaha 01V digital mixer on top, got a quad of stereo graphic equalizers (to compensate the 8 inputs for the particular speakers/placement they were in), and hooked it all up. Wow! Even at "2/3 knob" volume, the whole church was totally filled. Almost always got as many compliments for the music as guarded complaints that we were a little bit loud. LOL.
Point is - the RA100 is a gem in the rough.
GoatGuy
A lot of people here are quoting db levels but are these average or peak? A weighted or C weighted? Otherwise somebodys 70db is anothers 90db. I find for example that I listen to music that is usually in the middle 90s peak but average is around the 80's.
Technically therefore if you are sitting 2 meters away from 87 db speakers you should get 93 db peaks with about 4 watts (let's not overdrive the amp) give or take a couple db for room effects. For me that would be just about acceptable. In any case this conversation is just going around in circles since there is no sure way to theoretically arive at the correct conclusion. I think most of the views here are saying that 7 watts may be slightly underpowered for a largish room like 20x16 if you want slightly high volume levels.
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