Tubes Asylum

Posted by doodlebug (A) on December 24, 2006 at 10:09:34

In Reply to: tubey posted by Jayme on December 22, 2006 at 20:52:11:

Hi Jayme,

I agree with your observations - thanks for posting them. I, too, have discovered that the tube amp designers of old knew how to make excellent-sounding amps. They were most limited by the quality of parts they could use such as capacitors. Transformers they knew well, however, as can be seen from the likes of Harmon-Kardon, Heath and others.

I want to take a bit of exception to the comment on Mac tube amps. The output configuration of all Mac amps with their Autoformers is quite well-accepted and not at all unconventional. Its *is* a bit more expensive to implement in production and, hence, most designers tend to use alernative approaches as a result.

The fact that they continue to use it 40+ years after its introduction means that there's value there. I also note the use and discussion of 3rd party autoformers these days on these Asylums for speaker matching. It does, indeed, seem funny that some ideas come around again and again......

Cheers,

David