• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

Anybody watching this?

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I doubt I would get my money back after I parted it out and put the iron in a DIY amp that would kill it in a terms of sound quality... I got some magic beads, hard wood bases, and special silver cables to sell to the guy who wins...:p
Athos

Have you heard a Fairchild amp? Any Fairchild amp? :D Had you the opportunity you might be eating your words.. I have to admit I am stunned to see a pair of these selling for this sort of money though.

Some of their bigger domestic PP UL amps (25W and up) command > $10K a pair when you can find them and are regarded as being extremely collectible. I don't own any, as they have always been outside of my price range, but I know people who collect them.

This is one of America's most obscure brands, very premium in its day, and about 10 times rarer than most Marantz gear. They made amps, pre-amps, and turntables that even today are quite well regarded. They might have been the first to have an electronically controlled TT back around 1957..

The company today is known for its semiconductors.. (Yeah it is that company.)
 
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FAIRCHILD made excellent quality pro gear but regardless how rare these are, over 50K$ (at the time of writing) is just... insane ! The reputation of the world's most expensive and sought after compressor-limiter (The FAIRCHILD 670 @ 30K$) certainly helped pushing up the value of this brand which was almost unknow to most audiophiles so far. Still... 50K$+ for old industrial looking amp's with leaky "black stripe" caps, aged selenium rectifiers and only 2 ohms and 600 ohms output taps ? Just imagine the 2A3PP amp you could build (or buy) for (half) that money .
 
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FAIRCHILD made excellent quality pro gear but regardless how rare these are, over 50K$ (at the time of writing) is just... insane ! The reputation of the world's most expensive and sought after compressor-limiter (The FAIRCHILD 670 @ 30K$) certainly helped pushing up the value of this brand which was almost unknow to most audiophiles so far. Still... 50K$+ for old industrial looking amp's with leaky "black stripe" caps, aged selenium rectifiers and only 2 ohms and 600 ohms output taps ? Just imagine the 2A3PP amp you could build (or buy) for (half) that money .

They've always had a following here in the Northeast, and in the 30yrs or so I have known about them, nothing made by Fairchild has been affordable unless you got lucky enough to run across some uninformed or desperate family member selling a deceased audiophile's collection. They also made domestic hifi gear which is equally or even rarer.

I would think you could build a pretty spectacular pair of PP 2A3/300B amps for about $5K - $6K.
 
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IMO, fetish items like this rarely live up to their hype. Leica cameras for example. However, I was being cheeky :), and yet I really do believe that many of DIY amps that the experienced builders here (not me :) )build are better than much of the commercial offerings past and present. I've owned nice gear, not 50k gear, but I'd listen to my own creations over all of it. To a collector 50k might not be much, your buying history, not to be touched.

Athos
 
Sold (apparently) for $57100, an impressive amount.

I really have no objection to people paying this kind of money for rarities, even though they may not be considered perfectly suited for everyday use. In the same way as the James Bond Aston Martin DB5 sold for millions – nobody would claim that it’s the best car you can buy for that kind of money, but if you want it, that’s the price you’ll have to pay.
 
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At this point its more than worth it to turn out fakes in my garage and sell one every 18 months or so.. :devily:

Google AN or Kondo Ongaku or Gaku-On, or Keegon, and see what those go for. :D

The Paypal fee on $57,000 would be about $1600 which is probably why he is not accepting Paypal on this item. Were I selling something like this I wouldn't use Paypal either..
 
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That's about $15K more than I paid for my HOUSE! Yeah, I have been living in the same place for a while.

Of course you paid in undepreciated dollars so this amplifier probably in real terms cost a lot less than you paid for your house. For some people this just represents a drop in the bucket, I don't think too many of us here fall into that category.. :D
 
Fairchild 620 manufactured by Brook Electronics

The Fairchild 620 was manufactured by Brook Electronics and is very similar to a Brook 10C3 amplifier; main difference being a voltage regulator used for voltage regulation of the front-end. A schematic of the amplifier can be found on page 621 of Oliver Read's, "The Recording and Reproduction of Sound," Second Edition (1952).

The 620 was primarily designed to drive cutter heads for making acetate or soft wax recordings. I have owned two Brook 10C3 amps. A common problem discovered by Brook amp owners is "open" interstage transformer windings; especially amps exposed to humid environments. My first Brook amp was exposed to Florida humidity and developed an open interstage transformer winding. Brook amps that have made their way to East Asian countries have also had interstage transformer problems. A Fairchild 620 or Brook amp is best suited for display purposes. A much better amplifier can be created by using the Brook Electronics circuitry used with newer transformer technology; such as Lundahl transformers. I've built a "new" Brook 10C3 (using a regulated, solid state power supply with DC front-end filaments) and the new version of the Brook sounds much better than the original.

Perhaps the two Fairchild 620's sold for $57.1K will be used to drive a record cutting lathe. But the owner might have to destroy the museum quality appearance of these amps because of the need to change-out the interstage transformers.
 
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