Oh well, until I need a month's rent, I just keep them in the box with all the other tubes in my collection. All my power amps use EL34's or 6L6's. These just won't fit.
Heck, it is bipolar transistors for me at the moment, and fets in the future. At least, my output devices. I will probably never go back to tubes, BUT they can sound wonderful, above and beyond, in the midrange, my best efforts.
John, if you don't mind my asking, was that triode amp that you used as a reference for your work in the 1960s a Marantz model 5 in triode mode? Just curious.
Pete B.
Pete B.
john curl said:
Thanks John,
The Williamson amp that he (Sid Smith) did for Radiocraftsman, I take it?
Pete B.
GRollins
Gary Pimm had the same falling out with tube quality you mention. He took his Karna based push pull OPT's and some appropriate push pull interstage devices, stuck a CCS on the front as a splitter and exchanged tubes for solid state. He hasn't looked back since.
I have heard the amp, quite delicious sounding, everything you might want from a tube amp sonically, but with distortion levels much further down. You might ring him up and ask him his thoughts.
Bud
Gary Pimm had the same falling out with tube quality you mention. He took his Karna based push pull OPT's and some appropriate push pull interstage devices, stuck a CCS on the front as a splitter and exchanged tubes for solid state. He hasn't looked back since.
I have heard the amp, quite delicious sounding, everything you might want from a tube amp sonically, but with distortion levels much further down. You might ring him up and ask him his thoughts.
Bud
I'm pleased to read you've gained some self-knowledge, finally ... 😀
And eh .... tubes... yes interesting ......
Why don't we start a thread on tubes. Perhaps a good idea to drive my Inifinity's in the upper and mid-range or would solid state also do?
Tony said:
Hi Tony,
Thanks, but I'm pretty lazy 🙂. Could you be more specific about what you have in mind?
Thanks,
Bob
Bob Cordell said:
hey Bob,
here's one thread, just do not pay attention to SY and Thorstein sparring....😀
PRR knows his tubes, i picked up a lot from him.......
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=58428&perpage=25&pagenumber=3
john curl said:
It's embarrassing. I built a reasonably conventional tube amp, put a little extra care into the power supply, and ended up with a monster that eats solid state amps for breakfast. My goal is to equal that performance with solid state...not exceed it...simply equal it. I suspect I'll be at it for a while.
People keep saying that they've got a solid state piece that 'sounds as good as tubes.' Yup. And I've got swampland in Florida I'd like to sell them.
Grey
MikeBettinger said:
How is it around small children?
We tend to keep the young 'uns away from the big system. They are (so far) content to listen to the secondary system in the living room. I'll try to make audiophiles out of them when they get a little older.
bogdan_borko said:
My amps are ugly. I take pieces of wood from a pile of castoffs in my shop and throw things together. The tube amps in particular are laughable, in that they've got Masonite bottoms, the sides are pieces of scrap 1 x 4" cut down to about 2 1/2 or 3" and a stupid-looking bridge that holds the output transformer and two power transformers above the circuit. I rarely leave circuits alone for long and the tube amps are no exception. A couple of months after I finished them, I decided I needed more room in the back of the chassis to add something, so I tagged some more wood on the sides to lengthen the thing. The back is Masonite. The front is Masonite. I can't remember whether the tubes are on a piece of wood or Masonite. No, I don't have a thing for Masonite--the guy who built the house I now live in left behind a bunch of it when he moved out. I've been using it up. Don't know what I'll do when it's gone.
So I've got this JC-3 doo-dad that's almost ready for a thread. "This time..." says I, "this time I'm gonna do it right. I'm gonna drop some money and have a real chassis made!"
(The audio gods laughed themselves silly when they heard this...)
I've had problems in the past trying to get metal work done around here. I won't bore you with the details, but it took a while for me to get up my courage and start calling around. I spent two or three days on the phone, most of which was wasted because the local metal places don't want to talk to you about a mere one or two units. They want to hear you talking about hundreds. But I did manage to find a few places that would (grudgingly) agree to talk to me. Maybe.
At about which point my wife comes to me and says, "Ma oof urts."
To which I said, "Huh?"
She points waaay back in her mouth and says, "Ma oof urts!"
"Oh...your tooth hurts. Got it. Okay, honey, go see the dentist."
The dentist must have been out looking at new cars that week, because he promptly siphoned off all the money I had intended to put into metalwork. For some arcane reason, the insurance people declined to do their part, so it all came out of my wallet.
So my JC-3s are on...you guessed it...Masonite.
The oldest kid left behind her old digital camera when she went out to Berkeley to do the grad school thing. I read the manual for the confounded thing, but I'll be damned if I see how two buttons are 'simpler' than a dozen when you have to push one three times, then the other twice, then the other, other one four times, then back to the first one for a time or two...or was it the other way around? Oh, fooey! I refuse to carry the manual around just to take snapshots. My wife learned enough to take pictures of the kids, and she's already offered to take pictures of the amps once I get a few last minute details out of the way, so in theory, there will be pictures for that project.
But they're still ugly.
Though better than the tube amps.
Grey
bogdan_borko said:
if i understood his english correctly, the guy asked for photos, not anecdotes....😀
Grey, I know the heatsinks I sent you were ugly. Do you need any more. I have 2 about 35 pounds a piece. I was going to build a monster amp but with the transformer it was 110 pounds and couldn't get it on the work bench.
john curl said:
Then I'm in good company!
The dogs bark, but the caravan moves on...
MikeW said:Grey, I know the heatsinks I sent you were ugly. Do you need any more. I have 2 about 35 pounds a piece. I was going to build a monster amp but with the transformer it was 110 pounds and couldn't get it on the work bench.
The heatsinks you sent are blameless--I'm using the junkyard ones with busted corners for the time being. Pd at the moment stands at something north of 130W/ch for the 25W monoblocks. It's the bridged version that's going to get rough. I'll either have to go water-cooled or back off the bias and go class AB (eeek!).
If you're tripping over surplus metal I can always take some off your hands.
(35 pounds? I didn't know they made them that big! I'll bet Dolly Parton is jealous...)
Grey
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