Hi there,
I found these transformer at Maplin. Was wondering if they were any good ??
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=46773&doy=27m9
At £22.00 they look to good to be true.
Shoog
I found these transformer at Maplin. Was wondering if they were any good ??
http://www.maplin.co.uk/Module.aspx?ModuleNo=46773&doy=27m9
At £22.00 they look to good to be true.
Shoog
Gentlemen,
Just because something is small with less than Hi-Fi specifications, doesn't mean it's poor. If it sounds good, Great!
There's a lot of bad sounding things on the market with great specs and a lot of great sounding things that are lousy on paper.
One of the finest truism's I have read came from member BHD, "There are lies, damn lies and specs."
If *you* like the sound, go for it! But there's only one way to find out
Cheers!
Just because something is small with less than Hi-Fi specifications, doesn't mean it's poor. If it sounds good, Great!
There's a lot of bad sounding things on the market with great specs and a lot of great sounding things that are lousy on paper.
One of the finest truism's I have read came from member BHD, "There are lies, damn lies and specs."
If *you* like the sound, go for it! But there's only one way to find out
Cheers!
Geek said:Gentlemen,
If *you* like the sound, go for it! But there's only one way to find out
Cheers!
Yes okay but any amp should tolerate long speaker cables...without problems-...and using the maplin o/p tranny compounded one of many problems I came acrosss
...I haven't examined the tranny construction in depth but the leakage inductance/capacitance value was way too high...that determines the quality of build......I made the mistake of believing the commercial claim that it was suitable when in fact it wasn't even sectionally interwound The orig Mullard 20 watt amp clearly stipulates a sectionally wound tranny.
richj
richwalters said:
Emphasis added by me.
Since we're offering opinions I hope I'm safe offering mine. Wouldn't it be more fair to say that for MI use, a 'poor' transformer might be satisfactory?
It's just that I'm on a crusade to dispel the myth that junk parts are likely to result in a good guitar amp.
-- Dave
Dave Cigna said:
Would you care to elaborate? The signal leaving a guitar is pretty boring. If the amplifier was faithful to what came in, it would be equally boring. It's the combination of guitar and amplifier that makes the instrument. So, the question is, what sort of "errors" are musically interesting?
I seem to have discovered the source of these Maplin transformers:
http://www.livinginthepast.demon.co.uk/xformer.html
Interestingly, the type supplied to Maplin is not claimed as being sectionalised, while the others in the range are. The prices seem very reasonable.
Perhaps Maplin drove too hard a bargain....
Has anyone used this company's transformers (apart from the Maplin one)?
http://www.livinginthepast.demon.co.uk/xformer.html
Interestingly, the type supplied to Maplin is not claimed as being sectionalised, while the others in the range are. The prices seem very reasonable.
Perhaps Maplin drove too hard a bargain....
Has anyone used this company's transformers (apart from the Maplin one)?
I seem to have discovered the source of these Maplin transformers:
http://www.livinginthepast.demon.co.uk/xformer.html >>>>
These are the Danbury range of transformers which are now discontinued and unavailable. They have been replaced by quite different OEP (Oxford Electronic Products) transformers which have nothing in common with the Danbury ones. OEP have been selling quite aggressively as regards price.
http://www.livinginthepast.demon.co.uk/xformer.html >>>>
These are the Danbury range of transformers which are now discontinued and unavailable. They have been replaced by quite different OEP (Oxford Electronic Products) transformers which have nothing in common with the Danbury ones. OEP have been selling quite aggressively as regards price.
EC8010 said:
I couldn't disagree more. The signal leaving a guitar is rich in nuance. Some of this is from the guitar itself. I'm talking largely about the structure of the instrument; the wood in the body and neck. If that were not the case then any guitar would sound as good as any other. Obviously, all guitars sound different. Even more nuance comes from the player. That's so complicated that I don't know where to begin!
The point is this: there is a lot of important detail in the signal coming from the guitar that you don't want trashed by the amplifier. Instead, the amplifier should work well with those details in one way or another. Different amps might sound different, and they might work well or not so well with different guitars (depending on the musician to some degree.)
If you study the amps that sound good I think you'll find that NONE of them were built to a very low price point. The ones that sound good have been the result of a great deal of experimentation, listening, and listening to the feedback from the musicians that use them.
I've thrown together plenty of junk-box guitar amps. The ones that were made from truly junky parts sounded junky just as a stereo playback amp would sound junky made from the same parts. If you're lucky, you might get *one* interesting but highly distorted sound from them, but that does not make a useful amp.
While I'm ranting I'd like to touch on one piece of evidence often offered that good guitar amps are made from cheap components: the size of the output transformers. The size of any transformer core is determined by the total flux required; you want to keep the flux density low enough that the core doesn't saturate. The total flux in a core is proportional to the power delivered and inversely proprortional to the frequency. The frequency dependency means that an output transformer is sized for the lowest frequency that needs to be delivered.
The lowest note a guitar can produce is 82 Hz. That's four times the 20 Hz that most hifi amps are designed to reproduce. That means a 40W guitar amp can have an output transformer 1/4 the size of a 40W hifi amp! If you look at the Fender amps from the mid 60's (the ones that are so coveted by some musicians) you'll find that the 40W bass amp had an output transformer about twice the size of the 40W guitar amps. A myth is that Fender did this because bass players want a cleaner sound. I think it's because the Fender engineers knew that the lowest note on the bass is an octave lower than that of a guitar. It makes perfect sense when you brush aside the morass of myth and folklore.
-- Dave
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