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RE: power supply vs sound?

Vinnie,

I think the end result is the sum of all the parts. Not just one part in particular. That includes the tubes used as well as what is driving the tubes, hence the power supply.

Here is another story I have when doing some modifications to an ST-70, one of my first when I entered the hobby.

I went the route of putting in gobs of capacitance after the choke, changing the coupling caps, rebuilding the bias supply, and other routine modifications that everyone was doing back in the day. Turned on the amp and I didn't like what I heard. Yes the bass was better but was it really? It was more pronounced and the mids and highs were compromised. Not knowing much about what I was doing except for the fact that I can solder and change parts I brought the amp over to my friend Ben Jacoby(New York Audio Repair in Brooklyn). He went over it with a fine tooth comb and all he could figure out was that I changed the Time Constants by over sizing the capacitance by lots of capacitance. His rule of thumb is never go more than double the original value and I went more than double the double. He proceeded to knock everything down to a more logical amount and there it was. All the sound came back. he said that these engineers of back in the day knew what they were doing and why reinvent the wheel when it works the way it is. making it more reliable is one thing but changing the character of the amp is another and inadvertently that is what I did not knowing any better.

This is where the power supply is the culprit of a bad sound no matter what tubes or brands of tube I used.

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