Audio Asylum Thread Printer

Get a view of an entire thread on one page

FAQ / News / Events

Tubes Asylum

ASL Wave 8 - people still having fun with 'em? (Posted on 'Amps' but no replies yet)

67.31.178.220

[ Follow Ups ] [ Post Followup ] [ Thread: Display Email Next ] [ Tubes Asylum ]

I picked up a used pair in excellent condition, totally stock. Hooked 'em up and found 'em to sound pretty good but, as the seller described them, 'not quite for the discerning audiophile' in stock form. Easy to imagine how a little tweaking can bring incrementally large improvement. Still, for an orig price of $100 per side, a person practically forfiets their right to complain about them in any way and they are darn cute little buggers besides ; ) I've heard much worse at thrice the price.
I bought 'em to tweak and tweakable they are; the circuitry is amazingly simple. .47 Auricaps, components for Asylum-recipe power cords, new RCA inputs and speaker outputs on the way, plan to re-orient the back transformer so it isn't parallel to the front one.. In the meantime I have learned they sound a whole lot better with highly efficient speakers (well, duh! for 8wpc).
Anyone else out there still enjoying their Waves? Used to be frequent posts about people mod'ing 'em and having a blast with 'em. Still see 'em sell like hotcakes whenever a pair hits A'gon, which isn't very often. Who's still running 'em, what do you think about em' and what did you personally find to be the best tweaks and mods (I know there is a ton of posts on this in the archives but I haven't seen much new since 2002 or so)? Any particular recommended speakers to match with the little guys?

Follow Ups:

Re: ASL Wave 8 - people still having fun with 'em? (Posted on 'Amps' but no replies yet) - jdh 08:31:22 01/26/04 (4)
I love mine. They get at least 6 hours play every day. Did the Auricap mod - just keeps sounding better. Have Tants and Holcos coming in this week to upgrade signal path resistors. Didn't bother with the transformer re-orientation. Roll some NOS tubes and you'll really like what you hear - that hum is from those Sovteks.
- Re: ASL Wave 8 - people still having fun with 'em? (Posted on 'Amps' but no replies yet) - Audiopro 09:19:17 01/26/04 (3)
  I would have to agree, the Auricaps are one of the best things to do to your Waves. They take forever to break in though. Reorienting the tranny is a waiste of time. You might want to look at putting Panasonic filter caps in the power supply. There as good a cap as any out there including Black Gates.
  - Maybe I'll skip the trannie re-orientation based on feedback I've been getting. I considered ... - PureAudio 10:39:36 01/26/04 (0)
    ...painting the trannies but ten minutes on each side with some Flitz and 00 steel wool brought them to an almost mirror like luster. I know what you mean about burn-in time on the Auri's! I almost pulled them out of my ForePlay at 40 hours because they sounded worse than the stock green meanies but at 100 hours I was awe struck by how great they sounded.
  - Re: ASL Wave 8 - people still having fun with 'em? (Posted on 'Amps' but no replies yet) - jdh 09:44:21 01/26/04 (1)
    What do you think about replacing D1 - D4 (IN4007) diodes in the heater circuit with ultrafast (UF4007 ?). Anything to be gained there?
    - Re: ASL Wave 8 - people still having fun with 'em? (Posted on 'Amps' but no replies yet) - Audiopro 11:05:41 01/26/04 (0)
      Don't know that changing diodes would make that much difference, but if you have the board out anyway it's probably worth the $3.00 in diodes.

This post is made possible by the generous support of people like you and our sponsors:

Parts Connexion

You can not post to an archived thread.