50.000 $ for a 30W amplifier .

[analog_sa]

Yet another cloned high end product to add to the list....sounds sweet to me

This ain't no gaincard The circuit is well known and not very exciting. If there is magic it comes from the ingredients which are pure and simple unobtanium.

[Magura]

Originally posted by analog_sa


If there is magic it comes from the ingredients which are pure and simple unobtanium.

And what would that be?? Unobtainable parts...as in ??

Cheers

Magura

[djdan]

1) The hallmark of all Kondo power amplifiers is that they are made of pure hand drawn silver wire. The out transformers are wound with age annealed silver wire, all internal signal wiring and ground are pure silver litz braid covered with six coat of polyurethane. There are over 20 pounds of pure silver in each Ongaku.

2) All Kondo amplifiers use special Hi-B cores in their output transformers. The exact composition, as well as the annealing and stamping of the core material are all engineered by and supervised by Kondo. There are no 'off the shelf' materials used in Kondo's output transformers.

3) All Kondo amps have a heavy, pure copper chassis.



4) All Kondo power amplifiers use ISO TANGO power transformers and chokes, these are the worlds finest.


5) All Silver Kondo amps use hand made silver coupling capacitors made from hand drawn silver foil. These capacitors are made in Kondo's own factory.


6) The tantalum resistors, designed by Kondo and unique to the Audio Note line, are costly but are no compromise and necessary to obtain the "Kondo sound".


7) Kondo amps are wired with a special acid free, silver solder strictly selected by that costs almost $300.00/Kilo.


Copy/Paste from Kondo - Audio Note
==============================================

How much it cost 20 pounds of silver ?
It so important to sound quality or it is a fashion ?
If Kondo will use in a future 40 pouns of silver the sound would be twice better ?

20 pounds = 10 Kg ?

[Magura]

Seems like 5% actual truth...95% BS

Ive never been all that impressed with the idea of silver here and there....in many cases its downright a disadvantage. Maybe they found the wise stone...who knows???

Cheers.

Magura

[tom1356]

Originally posted by Magura
Seems like 5% actual truth...95% BS

Ive never been all that impressed with the idea of silver here and there....in many cases its downright a disadvantage. Maybe they found the wise stone...who knows???

Cheers.

Magura

You think they are lying 95% in what they say?
What do you base that opinion on?
Are you there when they build the amps?
Do you know they are not built the way Kondo says?
It seems to me they are telling you how they are made not how they sound.

When is silver a downright disavantage?
When have you heard a Kondo amp?
When have you heard silver output transformers?

[NEAR_SOTA]

$50K for any component is like ****ing $$ into the wind no matter what it is made from.

I never will inderstandd how people can actually pay more money for a piece than what you would get buying a fine automobile and I will never pay that much for an auto I do not think unless I was another Bill Gates and it was a Hummer or some other Utility vehicle.

ANother thing I'll never understand are those who buy sports cars in america that do 200mph. Like where can you open them up here.I think they should be outlawed for safety sake.Maybe i'd own them if I was a collector.I think Richard Wright of Pink Floyd collects autos and has a book about them. If you have that kind of $$ and know what you are buying then I guess there are particular readons to get them.

Are you buying the amp?

[Christer]

Hey guys, even an economic illiterate like me knows the first
rule of marketing. The reason product X costs $Y is not that
it costs $Y to manufacture it (although that is a lower limit),
but becuase the market is williing to pay $Y for it. They wouldn't
charge $Y for it if there were not a suffcient customer basis
willing to pay this price. Why these customres are willing to
pay the price is another issue.

[uvodee]

1 kilogram = 2.202 lbs

so 20 lbs / 2.202 = 9.08 kgs

9.08 kgs * $300 = $2,724.00 for the silver

I think a mark up from raw materials to finished end product with a ratio of 18 is not really extreme ....

there are some other things that have a nice mark up
look at cars made of steel, aluminum, copper, leather, wool and abs plastics..... they run in the 30-40 K and noone complains about it, while they even reach bigger markets compared to our little san....

Jean-Pierre

[fdegrove]

Hi,

Conventional triode connected pentodes have the second grid tied to the anode, which results in a halfway compromise between a pentode and a triode. This neither has the efficiency of the pentode, nor the linearity of the triode. Tim de Paravicini’s Enhanced Triode Mode (ETM) goes one step further, and creates a true, highly linear triode from a robust pentode tube.

Silver wire anyone?

The Ongaku isn't Kondo's best design but then I guess you don't want to spend 100.000 + to find out ether?

Tim de Paravicini? Interesting you'd mention that, explain ETM to us all please....

What I'm paricuraly interested in is how it affects Zo and if connecting G3 to A is going to make it look like a real triode after all.

Cheers ,

[carl]

A system built around the Ongaku sounds simply wonderful. I have had the opportunity to listen to a system with the Ongaku, a Kondo M7 phono preamplifier, Audio Note TT1/ARM2, Levinson Reference CD transport, Audio Note AN E/Spe (whatever their best speaker is), and all Audio Note Kondo silver interconnects and speaker wire.

Is it worth somewhere between 150 and 200 large for the whole system? No way to me; maybe to some fabulously wealthy person. Does it sound a lot better than my level 3 Audio Note system (level 1 preamp)? Yes, very much so but mine sounds great.

A nice used Ongaku for 50k sounds like a high price. The two or three that are original and in mint condition are usually around 30 large; such a deal.

Nice to have a place to go listen to that reference system and only having to spend gas money to get there and do it. And the more expensive units do sound better; a Shinri (original Kondo stereo 300b SET amp) sounds noticeably better than my Conqueror but a used Shinri is some price like over 10 grand).

Carl