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RE: I'm thinking that this amp was not class A or anywhere near.

Interesting you mention that Lew. I used to have Silvaweld OTL Referernce monoblocks (4 x 6C33C per channel...huge suckers) that I had to start sequentially so they didn't blow the circuit breaker too often. The first turn on ALWAYS tripped the breaker and the second time was ok (guess the power supply was already partially juiced).

Still one of the most spookily real sounds I have ever gotten from amplifiers, made my Acoustats sing with joy...but oh the HEAT!!! Rasied the T in my room by 10°C in about 2 hours! Couldn't live with'em.

At one time, I had an all Silvaweld system, OTL monos, SWC1000 preamp and the SWH650 phono. Now I have just the phono because I went to integrated amps. The KR VA350i and NAT Symbiosis I have now have elements of that spooky realism of the OTLs but not quite. The one thing that bothered me about them was that the sound while super transparent and real in some ways was also somehow incoherent in the imaging and stageing and I think it had to do with what I observed on the bias and DC offset meters during music swings.

The needles "pulled to one side of scale, indicating that the matching between tubes was off DYANMICALLY and the bigger the swing the worse it got. Perhaps that is what is happening with all of the Totem-pole type OTL but without meters you don't see it. My SET amps always sound rock stable once setup and that was something the OTL never sounded like...it was nervous sounding because the image and soundstage were not stable and it appears the amp was also not stable...at least into an electrostatic speaker load.


I regret selling the SWC1000 preamp...that was a real reference product.

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