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Dynaco mkIII A431 op's

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Hi all
i'm looking for a pair of output transformers to replace dynaco mkII outputs (A430) since they don't have 4ohm taps, which i need for my current speakers.
the most available and "drop fit" option is the A431 clone Triode electronics in chicago sell. triodeelec used to sell magnaquest trannies but now they are unlabeled. they claim them to be good at least as originals.
does anyone have experience with the Triode electronics dynaco clones? quality? electrical measurements?
any other options for replacement transformers?

mr Ned Carlson?

thanks
dan
 
Hi Dan,

Can't provide you with any electrical measurements but I have used both the A470 (Dynaco 70) and the A431 (MK 3). The A431 in particular is a big unit!

They are both well built, robust transformers. They appear well made with nice long, quality leads. They run cool.

As far as the sound goes - well, they sound great to me, no complaints at all.

I have dealt with Matt at triode on quite a few occasions and he has always been honest, helpful and straightforward to deal with.

Hope this helps,

Rob
 
hey-Hey!!!,
There is another winder of the A431 to consider, Heyboer TX in Michigan. Their price on them is better than the Dynaclone and quality is excellent.

AFIK, there was a minor difference in U-L tap location between the two, with the 430's being a few percent lower.
cheers,
Douglas
 
dan _s said:
...triodeelec used to sell magnaquest trannies but now they are unlabeled. they claim them to be good at least as originals.
does anyone have experience with the Triode electronics dynaco clones? quality? electrical measurements?
any other options for replacement transformers?


If you visit Shannon Park's www.diytube.com and dig around--- they had done a series of tests on (if I remember correctly) the Z-565 EL-84 dynaco transformers and several clones\replicas. It might give you some insights to consider and take into account.

We quit making the ST 70 and MK III outputs some time ago. I have some coil stock of the large 120 watt A-451 outputs as well as a few of the ST-35 (EL-84) outputs. In the future I want to do a limited edition run of some ST-70 outputs but with a really hotrodded coil design and state of the art core laminations--- while maintaining the same impedances and power ratings and etc. But that will be off in the future a bit.

msl
 
Steve Eddy said:


So just who are these folks? I've seen you mention them numerous times. Have they ever produced any transformers of their own or are they just the Kinkos of the transformer world?

se

You make it sound like producing the vintage designs is a bad thing. I have used them to produce modified vintage units that were either( though usually both )un-sourceable or ridiculously expensive elsewhere. For example, their multiple tap 10k output based on the Peerless S-265-Q cost me about $100 each. One of the two other known sources refused to modify it, and wanted more than $300 per copy, and the other was of similar 3:1 cost disadvantage.

If you'd like to discuss their own designs, I suggest you speak to them pesonally and lay out your needs and expectations and see how they'd work for you.
cheers,
Douglas
 
Bandersnatch said:


....based on the Peerless S-265-Q....

Peerless transformers has a federally registered trademark which identifies our products. I would appreciate it if you restrained yourself from using our brand name and\or it's protected trademarks.

Please don't abuse or misappropiate our goodwill for your unauthorized knockoffs.

Anyone who would be interested in authentic Peerless products is more than welcome to contact us at MagneQuest.

msl
 
MQracing said:


Peerless transformers has a federally registered trademark which identifies our products. I would appreciate it if you restrained yourself from using our brand name and\or it's protected trademarks.

Please don't abuse or misappropiate our goodwill for your unauthorized knockoffs.

Anyone who would be interested in authentic Peerless products is more than welcome to contact us at MagneQuest.

msl

Dear Mike,
I don't need your authorization. There is nothing owned by you to authorize which has any bearing on me taking apart vintage output Iron, modifying it, and publishing those details. You may wish there was, but I am afraid that your wishes are just not a valid reason that I feel any need to act upon.

We've been all over this, if you have something new to say, please feel free to contact me; I'll be most happy to listen and consider your request.
Best Regards,
Douglas
 
SY said:
...I think Mike's issue is the use of the trademarked name. He does own the trademark on "Peerless" and probably on that model designation.

of course i am concerned about Douglas' misuse of our brand name and our trademarks... but I also have a concern with the disclosing of our proprietary design information.... and of Douglas threatening to disclose such on this forum.

This is a personal vendetta being played out by Dougie. His case is no stronger than his "wanting to put me out of business" and threatening to harm our business (over an extended period of four plus years)--- which he has stated both publicly and in numerous private emails wich I have copies of.

This does concern me. Should diyaudio provide a harbor for a person who has a personal vendetta say against Electra-Print or Edcor--- and then allow that person to try to harm EP or Edcor by permitting the disclosure of each companies respective proprietary design work in the public domain--- when the only intent is to harm the business of the company?

There is no genuine interest in learning about transformers here. In fact--- Heyboer themselves were victimized in Douglas' little charade--- when he sent his S-265 up to them to tear down and make a copy of--- Douglas told them that this transformer maker was out of business and that he simply needed a pair of these to restore an amplifier. So, Heyboer helped him out--- not knowing at the time that Douglas really had some other goals in mind.

Once Heyboer was apprised of what the real situation was--- they assured me that they would no longer play any role whatsoever in aiding or abetting such illicit behaviour. And I think they were just frankly in shock over the situation and said they felt used. Both Phil and Alden (the owners of Heyboer) told me that they have absolutely no interest in stealing or pilfering ongoing designs from other companies.

So--- Doug now threatens that he will publish the data that he had obtained from Heyboer to "punish" us.

But again--- I think in our small audio community--- this kind of behaviour is just simply corrosive and unconscionable. Imagine--- what other small company\designer would be at risk next.

Are we going to tear apart the latest dac products and publish the proprietary designs of various companies on this forum with the intent and stated goal of running them out of business.

Such a forum would quickly become known as a rogue forum.

So my concerns extend a bit beyond the mere misuse of our trademark and our brandname.

MSL
 
Mike, I believe you have a right to protect your legal trademarks and I would suggest that anyone using them use them properly. I haven't seen any trade secret stuff disclosed, so I wouldn't worry about that too much.

:cop: If you guys have anything further to say about one another and your history, this forum is not the appropriate place. Consider this a formal cease-and-desist.
 
Re: Re: Dynaco mkIII A431 op's

Rob11966 said:
Hi Dan,

I have the triode replicas.

Rob

Hi Rob
in what amp are you using them? how do you like the result? did you test them with a square wave?

MQracing said:



We quit making the ST 70 and MK III outputs some time ago. I have some coil stock of the large 120 watt A-451 outputs as well as a few of the ST-35 (EL-84) outputs. In the future I want to do a limited edition run of some ST-70 outputs but with a really hotrodded coil design and state of the art core laminations--- while maintaining the same impedances and power ratings and etc. But that will be off in the future a bit.

msl

msl
indeed no PP tx's are listed on the MQ website. im looking for a Tx good at least as the A431 so ST70 and 35 types are not for me. A451 could be nice, i still have to measure and see if it will fit on the chassis. do you have an assembled pair for sale?
 
kstagger said:
[B I've read (perhaps from MQ Racing himself) that certain transformer designs / blueprints are long gone. [/B]


Is this Kurt? Hi.

Over the years we have purchased a lot of audio transformer blueprints from many different transformer companies who had built really nice, well regarded audio transformers in the heyday of the vacuum tube era.

We have prints from companies as diverse as Western Electric, Peerless, Acrosound, Dynaco, Freed, Western Transformers (diff than WE), Langevin, Triad, Chicago, and others.

Our main "catalogs" of vintage designs consist of the Peerless collection which we bought in it's entirety. Other collections were purchased by us on a piece meal basis--- where we bought individual blueprints or complete series of blueprints but not all of the companies engineering and designs.

The Peerless collection is somewhere in the mid to high nineties complete---- over the years I think I've only been dumbfounded once or twice where we just plain could not locate a particular Peerless part number in the archives.

So overall I'd say especially the Peerless collection is to a very large degree an intact and complete archive of designs authored by Peerless.

MSL
 
SY said:
You can do a pretty good job of reverse-engineering something, but the reality is that modern materials and better tooling can make a better transformer. The more I work with new transformers, the less enamored I am of the vintage iron in my collection.

And in many cases you will need to modify an old design because some of the materials used in the old design are no longer available.

So---- nothing beats having a collection of the original blueprints--- where you can compare and contrast a design amongst it's brethen from the same company--- and thereby learn the logic of the design and the design principles behind the number of turns, wire size, core size and etc.

because if you have to change any one of these--- that change will itself produce a host of other electrical and\or mechanical changes in the subject transformer. And then not knowing the logic and wu of the design milieu of the particular series--- you'll just be grasping at straws when you make changes--- and the design loses it's original integrity.

I don't want to (and won't) go too much into detail of how vintage designs can bee and must bee optimized if made today--- for (unfortunately) obvious reasons.

My experience with guys who have tore down tranneys is first and foremost the teardowns have rarely if ever been accurate nor complete. And since they did not have an uderstanding of the design precepts of the unit they were tearing down--- they have frequently really been at a loss as to what to do---- or how to make sense of the data they have. Again--- that is where having the entire range of the family of designs really becomes advantageous.

And lastly think of the motivation that most tear down artists have in mind. Not knowledge for the beauty and the aesthetic of understanding a design--- but a moreso practical reason--- they want a cheap knockoff. If your motivation is to do it cheaper--- the intracacies and subtleties of a design are just likely to go way over your head. These same subtleties and intracacies (even if accidentally discovered) are likely to be sacrificed in the building of the knockoff because, again, the motivation here is to make it cheaper and make it profitable to build.

When I first started out--- back in 88 or 89---- I did not envision myself winding transformers---- I got some blueprints and then sent them out to different transformer houses for quotes. Invariably--- I would get a call from someone at that company--- perhaps their engineer--- asking why are these windings reversed--- you (we) don't need to reverse these windings. And this just one example--- it's human nature in part--- the engineer knows what his companies production culture, technical, and craft capabilities and etc are--- he is going to take your design and in a great many (all in my particular experience) of the quotes just simply redesign the trans to fit their needs and capabilities. This especially being the case when your only asking them to build one, two or ten pieces of something. They just simply aren't going to change their way of doing things for a hundred dollar order.

So even under the best of circumstances--- even when you send the blueprint complete my experience was that getting someone to do it right was no simple task. Just imagine what's likely to happen where you (and you don't yourself have the knowledge to discriminate) send them a unit for a teardown---- who wants to bet on what level of "accuracy" as an outcome?

After a bit of the above experiences in the late eighties and trying to farm out this work-- I realized that if I wanted to do this (build tranneys) and do it right---- I was going to have to learn both the craft as well as the design (engineering) side of the business if I wanted to be a long term player and not simply someone who sold cheap knockoffs in a fly-by-night manner.

have I addressed your question at all ---- or did I go off the mark to far?

MSL
 
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