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In Reply to: RE: Need help with Sound Wright AG phono repair posted by lactogenes on May 08, 2016 at 20:03:20
That unit looks to be home built. I had his phono pre and it was all built on Hammond chassis. The unit is very prone to hum issues. Placement of the power supply chassis in reference to the preamp chassis and the type of interconnects also plays a role. Even with no hum the unit is not all tat quiet, which is the reason I sold mine.
Follow Ups:
somewhat modified for what I know. It was owned by the local Wright Sound dealer at the time. It was some kind of a special order, the "owner manual/instructions" were a sheet of paper hand written by Wright himself
I have owned many Wright pieces and all were always built very inexpensively on standard Hammond chassis. I didn't say they weren't built well but he did use mainstream parts. I spoke with him in detail when of course, he was alive(God rest his soul) and he was never into "boutique" parts. He always thought that expensive parts did reveal some good qualities but the expense wasn't worth it to him to get involved with unless the buyer specified that they wanted specific brands of parts and then he would adjust his pricing accordingly. He also felt that no matter what he used there were those that would change parts qualities anyway whether it needed it or not. He like John Wiesner(builder of the Arthur Loesch preamp) never believed in boutique parts and there were times I didn't either. I do believe SET amps reveal more sound changes that PP amps.
Also, I never knew there was ever a dealer for the Wright products. He always built to order. I do have a feeling the one you have was homebrew built. I also, have the schematic but I did promise George, at the time, that I would never share it with anybody unless it was to get it fixed.
The Silver (Ag) series phono stages used diecast boxes with the white covers. That's what that unit looks like since it has 9-pin tubes (12AX7 I think) instead of the 7-pin 6ER5 that the standard series used. He switched to 12AX7 because the supply of 6ER5 was drying up and he said he found a way to get equivalent performance from lower transconductance tubes.
While George's earlier products did not use boutique parts (except perhaps for output transformers) he did use Hovland and Auricaps in some of his later units and eventually developed a preference for Auricaps because he felt they were more extended in the highs. George didn't always build to order and he did not build all of his products by himself. He had a few guys building for him that were paid by the piece. A friend's pair of WPA-3.5 have stickers on the bottom plates with a "built by __" line and it wasn't George who built them.
How do I know all this? Well, George's gear had a pretty big following in Hawaii and he visited Honolulu a couple of times, bringing with him samples of his latest products. A local dealer, Audio Direction, Ltd. hosted listening/discussion sessions for him and served as a dealer for his product line. Audio Direction closed late last year after the owner, Stewart Ono died. George was a prince of a guy. He had the kind of useful knowledge and experience that old-timers rely on and many book-smart techies don't seem to appreciate.
The guy I acquired the phono stage from, used to sell good quality audio gear in the mid 2000's in Puerto Rico, like Spendor, Quad, Plinius, Jenna labs, and Wright Sound as well. Nice guy very knowledgeable of classic music unfortunately he pass away some years ago. As far as I know the unit was modified at Jenna labs, he had a very good business relation with Jennifer. The only thing I got from him was a piece of paper handwritten by Mr.Wright(again I was told that too) with instruction and type of tubes that could be swapped in the phono unfortunately I lost the paper when moving! Xaudiomanx by any chance do you mind to share what kind of tubes can be replaced in the power supply? This thing used to sound so good that I ruled out the idea of replacing it for something else
Thanks!
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