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Posts: 723
Location: San Diego
Joined: June 24, 2002
Contributor
Since: September 22, 2003
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It was a dark and stormy night (cue thunder and lightening), in a small city in Europe some guys who loved messing around with electronics and glowing tubes decided to build something that did not previously exist. Little did they know that later, “the Frankenstein” (cue the horses winnowing) would be born as a result. Wait, has this story been told before? The origin of the Frankenstein amp starts with a pair of stock Tektron TK2A3/50M (they might have been called 50/52 amps originally) mono amps made in Italy. These mono amps could use a wide variety of output tubes (including 2A3, 45, 50, 300B and VT52) by using switches to make adjustments. The original owner, in the LA area, had problems and sent it to Cyrus Brenneman (http://cyrusbrennemanaudio.com) to fix it. Cyrus looked at the schematics and suggested some modifications to the amps to improve it including the use of 6EM7’s as drivers and replacement of the output transformers. The owner had Cyrus make the circuit/tube modification but did not replace transformers. I understand he was a grad student at the time, maybe tight on bucks. Later he sold the amp to someone I know, who got it without any manual. He used 6SL7’s as drivers. It did not work for him so he sold them via Audiogon to me. I loved the idea of output tube switching, and really wanted to try 50’s. I had problems with it; one output transformer buzzed, ran hot and had less power than the other. I looked for someone near me to fix them and somehow got steered to
Cyrus Brenneman,who lived only about 40 miles away. I took the amps to him and he told me the story of his modifications and said he was not surprised that there was a problem with output transformers. He replaced them and the amp sounded very good. After a few months of trying them with various tubes, including 50’s, I decided I would go back to a dedicated 45 amp. I put them up for sale, and Israel Blume contacted me about buying them. Since I was a big fan of his Coincident Triumph speakers, we worked a swap for a pair of his new Triumph Extreme speakers. So that is how Israel came to have them. Apparently, he did lots of parts swapping and experimentation to get them to be the basis for “the Frankenstein”. I did tell him that Cyrus Brenneman had done the modifications, and I think he ended up contacting him. So, that is not the whole story. I understand that the amps in question were early versions for the US from Tektron, which had some problems, which were fixed in the final production versions. So, had the original owner not had one of the early versions of the amp, it would not have had the problems. Had he not lived in the LA area, and would never have gotten to Cyrus Brenneman to make the modifications. And if the second owner got correct info on the drivers, he probably never would have sold the amp to me. And if the original owner had the money to change out the output transformers, I would never have gotten it back to Cyrus. Had Israel not seen my ad, he would never had known about them. And had I not decided to sell the amp and love the deal of swapping for the Coincident speaker, the amps would not have gotten to Isreal Blume. So what about the schematics – who do they belong to? Since the original amps were made in Italy, design changes made in the US and the final development in Canada, this is a matter for international legal debate. Sorry, I don’t really care. I think the important thing is people are creative and driven to find, or make, things of beauty – even including audio equipment. I think this applies to Tektron, who makes very cool amps that let you switch out output tubes, Cyrus Brenneman, designer and builder of marvelous amps (I covet his 845 Silver Odyssey amp), and certainly to Israel Blume, who had the vision and determination to develop an amp to match his killer speakers (If I win the lotto I would buy a pair of his Pure Reference Extreme speakers). Cheers to all of them. (cue the lilting theme music)
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