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RE: Why integrated?....or must it be integrated?

Posted by Russ57 (A) on January 26, 2015 at 15:48:49

In Reply to: Need a list of tubed integrated amps worth restoring posted by airtime on January 26, 2015 at 06:13:09:

I could write a fricking essay and started to. At the end of the day it isn't about brand name but circuit design and tube choice.

I'm going to tell you there is no shortcut and you need to educate yourself. A lower power amp, with easy to drive tubes like 6v6, 6aq5, 6bq5, el84, does well with a voltage amp direct coupled to a split-load inverter. Harder to drive output tubes are better off with a voltage amp coupled to a long tailed pair inverter. While I have good sounding amps that use a paraphase inverter I would avoid that circuit. Sorry to say but you need to be able to look at a schematic and tell which is which. I'm willing to help.

Today we can use solid state parts to make superior tube loads called "CCS" (for constant current source). Vintage amps did this by choke loading or transformer loading. To get there we need to move away from dynaco, scott, fisher, pilot, sherwood names to rca, altec, western electric, brooks type names. Some of the chokes and interstage transformers in vintage amps are 200--300--400 dollar parts...but a good CCS is under 50 dollars. I'm not saying they are equal. The CCS is electrically superior but many like the sound of the magnetic part better. Point is, in some cases newer allows us to have superior at a lower cost.

A couple of very hard learned truths that are bound to ruffle some feathers: First, the more a unit responds to parts quailty change (above replacing what is broken with what is of decent quality) the more flawed the original circuit. Good designs don't need audiophool parts to sound good. Spend the money to get a good design and not the 100 buck capacitors/resistors/cables. If they make a big difference it is because they are acting as tone controls. Two, if you are spending more than a couple/few hundred in labor for someone to rebuild a unit you either picked something in terrible shape or something very difficult to work on. Part choices/costs are a different matter and should be agreed upon ahead of time.

In short, some units are worth the money to restore and many aren't. Sadly it is the ugly ones that are often far more deserving of spending your money on.

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