amioutaline?
New member
Hi Grainger,
I celebrated the Equinox by loading up my 10 year old Subaru and setting out from Asheville toward Portland, Oregon to see my old pal Steve Brown. Steve and I met when we lived near each other in Ohio and his expertise could always be depended upon to help me with my projects. We built the Tucker/Schmalle 45 amps together. Yeah, together... he read the schematics, suggested improvements and soldered while I poured the beer. About 10 years ago he returned home to Portland and I joined up with my family here in Asheville.
So I drove the 2800 miles in four days like an eight year old with his nosed pressed to the glass in wonder. Crossed the Memphis bridge into Missouri into a setting sun. Huge, lush circle-irrigated farms in Nebraska. Dark Side Of The Moonscapes across Wyoming. The ever present perfume of methane and Fields of Gold worth singing about in Idaho. Massive Cattle feed lots where Corn Becomes Protein or, as I like to put it, Fueling Points For Mobile Protein Delivery Vehicles. Snaking past the weird, wonderful Sandstone erosions of the Snake River Canyon in Utah and finally crossing the Cascades and running the Columbia River Gorge into Portland. A life's ambition fulfilled.
With me on the way were a pair of mono block amps I had attempted to build from a Diyaudio.com design http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/tubes-valves/156699-mullard-5-20-kt88-pp-blocks.html started almost 3 years ago. After two years of dozens of e-mails back and forth with Steve I got as far as blowing out the power transformers in both amps. Dumb ____ (fill in the ethnic group of your choice) story: "How'd I lose that finger? I stuck it in the saw...like this! I might have been in a little over my head.
Over a long weekend we sampled the great food so commonplace in Portland, saw the sights, visited a record store as big as a Walmart and got the amps working. Funny thing was, just like with the 45 amp, Steve built a pair also. But even after triode wiring the EF86, removing the NFB and a few other Steve-like tweaks, with a quad of Sovtek KT-88s, he had been unimpressed. Those amps became the basis for 300Bs. That was 2 years ago. I had brought Gold Lion KT-88s, however, and 30 seconds after cueing up Union Station, Steve looked back at me from where he was on the floor checking the bias current and went: WOW! Presently, he's about finished with restoring the 300Bs back to the KT-88 design with his own quad of Gold Lions!
Now the amps are back with me in my own little mountains and have about 100 hours on them. They're magnificent! Those 12 lb. JBL motors need, no, they deserve, the 56 Watts they're now getting. What does 25 times the power of a 45 give you? Everything. Forget all the negative things you've heard about push-pull. Forget how too many cooks (read some of the almost 1000 posts in the thread) spoil the soup. Forget about zillion dollar Output Transformers the Hammond 1650s have amazing control of the bass and the treble is extended and sweet or extended and powerful, whatever is called for. I'm ecstatic!
I also have a really great cure for the haziness of the 12AU7s in the Foreplay 2.1 I discovered after hearing these amps. Tune in next week.
I celebrated the Equinox by loading up my 10 year old Subaru and setting out from Asheville toward Portland, Oregon to see my old pal Steve Brown. Steve and I met when we lived near each other in Ohio and his expertise could always be depended upon to help me with my projects. We built the Tucker/Schmalle 45 amps together. Yeah, together... he read the schematics, suggested improvements and soldered while I poured the beer. About 10 years ago he returned home to Portland and I joined up with my family here in Asheville.
So I drove the 2800 miles in four days like an eight year old with his nosed pressed to the glass in wonder. Crossed the Memphis bridge into Missouri into a setting sun. Huge, lush circle-irrigated farms in Nebraska. Dark Side Of The Moonscapes across Wyoming. The ever present perfume of methane and Fields of Gold worth singing about in Idaho. Massive Cattle feed lots where Corn Becomes Protein or, as I like to put it, Fueling Points For Mobile Protein Delivery Vehicles. Snaking past the weird, wonderful Sandstone erosions of the Snake River Canyon in Utah and finally crossing the Cascades and running the Columbia River Gorge into Portland. A life's ambition fulfilled.
With me on the way were a pair of mono block amps I had attempted to build from a Diyaudio.com design http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/tubes-valves/156699-mullard-5-20-kt88-pp-blocks.html started almost 3 years ago. After two years of dozens of e-mails back and forth with Steve I got as far as blowing out the power transformers in both amps. Dumb ____ (fill in the ethnic group of your choice) story: "How'd I lose that finger? I stuck it in the saw...like this! I might have been in a little over my head.
Over a long weekend we sampled the great food so commonplace in Portland, saw the sights, visited a record store as big as a Walmart and got the amps working. Funny thing was, just like with the 45 amp, Steve built a pair also. But even after triode wiring the EF86, removing the NFB and a few other Steve-like tweaks, with a quad of Sovtek KT-88s, he had been unimpressed. Those amps became the basis for 300Bs. That was 2 years ago. I had brought Gold Lion KT-88s, however, and 30 seconds after cueing up Union Station, Steve looked back at me from where he was on the floor checking the bias current and went: WOW! Presently, he's about finished with restoring the 300Bs back to the KT-88 design with his own quad of Gold Lions!
Now the amps are back with me in my own little mountains and have about 100 hours on them. They're magnificent! Those 12 lb. JBL motors need, no, they deserve, the 56 Watts they're now getting. What does 25 times the power of a 45 give you? Everything. Forget all the negative things you've heard about push-pull. Forget how too many cooks (read some of the almost 1000 posts in the thread) spoil the soup. Forget about zillion dollar Output Transformers the Hammond 1650s have amazing control of the bass and the treble is extended and sweet or extended and powerful, whatever is called for. I'm ecstatic!
I also have a really great cure for the haziness of the 12AU7s in the Foreplay 2.1 I discovered after hearing these amps. Tune in next week.
