Tubes Asylum: REVIEW: Wright Sound Company WPA 3.5 Amplifier (Tube) by jwg

Wright Sound Company
and the meaning of life...
By Joe W. Gorman
The current madness regarding single-ended-triode (SET)
amps finally infected me to the point where I just had to evalu-ate
one or I'd need to be strapped to a gurney and shot-up
with 50cc of Thorazine-STAT. My new pair of
Klipschorns were frolicking in the warm tube-fired
guidance of Audio Research Corp but I just knew
there was more to life. Oh sure it sounded great but
what did everyone else, especially the Japanese, know
about the SET/horn combination that I didn't? And
was it really that good? And didn't I need to spend a Kajillion
dollars to close in on Valhalla. I needed answers. So I emailed
George and Brenda Wright at www.wright-sound.com. And
over the next couple of months I tuned in, dropped out and
got lost in a world heretofor only dreamt of-the land of reasonably
priced, quality hi-fi...
The idea of using real-low-powered tube amps bounced
around awhile in my evil head
before I schemed enough
interesting angles for an
article concerning the use of a three-watt amp, oh, excuse
me, three-point-five watt amp in conjunction with some
big-ass horns.
What kind of headroom are we talking here for one? And
what about bass?
Mmmmmmm. Bass.
The ARC VT60/K-horn bass...you'd need a surfboard to
ride that 35hz wave sometimes...Say what you will about
the VT60's black sheep status in the ARC line but that
beauty will plumb the depths when called upon to do so.
And what about an amp /preamp combo-with a phono-stage
yet-that sells for less than my now-discontinued
ARC VT60? What kind of quality are we talking about
here anyway? Judged from the pictures on the web-site,
the Wright WPA 3.5 and the WPL10V look more like mean
and nasty test equipment from a Nazi lab than the
graceful ARC stuff in my rack...coal-black cases with
industrial switches and ruthlessly efficient 2A3 tubes
FROM RED CHINA! What in the sam hell could this stuff
possibly sound like? Besides Pat Buchanan would beat the
dog shit out of me if he saw me burning RED CHINESE
tubes. And just what about subliminal messages? What
kind of communist propaganda would be oozing from these
Godless 2A3 output tubes? One day I'd be relaxing with a
little Miles or Coltrane and pretty soon I'd start with the
"power-sweating." The phone would ring and Angela
Landsbury, on the other end, would suggest I, "Pass the
time with a little solitaire." Before you knew it, we'd have
a commie operative in the White House...
Doh!

The Yin and the Yang of Life
The love of music and the "gee-whiz" of electronics comes
together perfectly in hi-fi. It is the ultimate mix of art and
science and all that happy crap. But in electronics, as the
power and number of features increase so does circuit
complexity and the sheer volume of componentry. It cannot
be avoided. This is neither good nor bad necessarily. I
would rather have a complex driver arrangement/network
ala Richard Vandersteen's Model 5 than a simpler rig that
had simplicity as its only virtue. But a simple design that
basically gets many important aspects of sound re-creation
right, ala Paul Klipsch's Klipschorns, would seem to have
less in the way of the music. (Although, if we were in Texas
right now, I'd stake the Klipsch design team to a fire-ant
hill and dump a bottle of warm Royal Crown Cola on them
for not removing that pointless elliptical filter in the
tweeter path of their big three-La Scala, Belle and K-horn.
It was put there to protect a delicate driver that
Klipsch no longer uses. Snip the lead going to the cap and
coil nearest the grill and you get rid of a ton of sibilance.
Are you listening Mr. Hunter?)
And what's true in speakers is even more pronounced in
preamps and amps. The Wright Sound Company gear has
far fewer components than most. It is the simplest hi-fi
amp I've ever played with. And because it uses point-to-point
wiring instead of the more common circuit board, it
is less prone to noise infiltration. To my way of thinking,
this means less in between the signal and you.
Couple this with the fact that the K-horn's crossover
network has three capacitors, three coils and an inductor
in the signal path wired point-to-point. See a trend? Yes,
you cynical types are scoffing already aren't you? 1930's
technology-horns and SETs. You're right it is 1930s
technology so if you're looking for a technological show-piece
you'll have to look elsewhere. But after extensive
listening sessions with the Wright gear I believe the old
ways are perhaps the best ways. Pete Townsend of the
WHO once remarked, "Led Zeppelin perfected the sound of
the four-piece band. It's gone downhill since." And in some
ways the same can be said of hi-fi.

Brass Tacks
The WPA 3.5 is a 3.5-watt-per-channel single-ended-triode,
zero-feedback mono amplifier. It uses Magnequest©
output transformers and is configured so as to be self-biasing.
It has an unusually low sensitivity (2V required
for rated output) but worked fine with an ARC LS7. The
WPL10V is an extremely simple preamp with a phono
stage. Both the amp and preamp
feature captive power cords. The
power supply of the preamp feeds
DC voltage to the preamp via a
microphone cord referred to in
product literature as an "umbilical
cord"
I placed the WPL10V unit on
the second shelf of my
Standesign Penta rack and its
separate power supply on the
bottom shelf. The owner's
manual suggests separating the
power supply from the preamp
by at least 12-inches. I placed the
WPA 3.5 Monoblocks side by side on homemade oak stand
next to the Penta. Each component had its own Isobar
surge suppresser/RFnoise filter connected to a dedicated
circuit with an isolated ground receptacle.
Hook up was typical with nothing unusual to report. The
selection of ohm taps on the back of the amps was different
from most tube amps in that there is only one set of
binding posts. Selection of ohm taps requires the user to
move a spade lugged wire to the appropriate terminal on a
plated terminal block. I quickly settled on the 4 ohm tap
and left it there for the rest of the audition. The amps offer
no provisions for balanced operation.
The preamp has no tape outs and no tape monitor, no
mute, no tone controls, just
two volume controls (one for
each channel) and a selector.
The phono stage is straight
forward at 47Kohms shunted
at 100 pF. The power switch is
located on the power supply
unit.
For this and all listening of
late sources included a
Thorens TD320MKIII with
RDC platter/Shure V15VxMR
and Pioneer Elite PD65 CD
player. Speaker cables were
Audio Quest Indigo and
interconnects were AQ Turquoise. As I mentioned, I chose
to use Klipschorns for this evaluation due to their 104db/
w/m sensitivity and because all us horn-loving types know
the audio legend about PWK voicing his K-horns with a
2A3 Brown amp.
From the first second of playback I knew I was in for a
rare treat. After the first evening was over, I was con-vinced
I was rocketing toward Valhalla.
First off, I have to report that this Wright set-up is
quiet. The amps gently buzz a second or two after turning
on but this only lasts a second. After that, all is silence
when no signal is being supplied. Likewise, Mr. Wright's
preamp is also dead quiet. Even the phono stage remains
silent. Klipschorns don't lie about noise. The sensitivity of
K-horns requires extremely quiet electronics and the
Wright stuff fits that bill as well as any equipment I've
heard-tube or solid state. Mr. Wright's preamp/amp is as
quiet as a Clinton cabinet member come Senate hearing
time.
You're probably wondering if 3.5-watts is enough to put
the smack down on your ass and I must tell you that 3.5-
watts from the Wright amp was plenty even when the
decibels reached into the 108db+ range on heavy duty
bass-intensive music. There may have been a little
flattening or compression at this volume level but I
certainly didn't stay up there for long. For a little louder
than normal listening, averaging 98 db, the Wright 3.5s
handled every transient perfectly and never even came
close to running out of gas. The transient response was
truly incredible. Way quick with the proverbial leading
edges.
This is not to say that the WPAs pumped out the volume
of bass that the VT60 could. It never did. If jackhammer
bass is what you're after stick with an ultralinear design.
The strength of the WPA's bass reproduction was not that
it could dilate one's sphincter valve, but that you could
hear every fret and pluck on well recorded software. There
is a quality of bass that I've not heard before from the K-horns.
Magneplanar quickness and articulation.
This leads to the revelatory aspect of the Wright stuff. I
had always thought that horns didn't really sing until they
started getting pushed into the 98db range. The Wright
combo made even soft listening sessions at 86db average
enjoyable (My newest baby, Patrick Joseph, was sleeping
upstairs). I could hear a loudness-switch-type fullness to
the sound with the WPAs on idle.
The Wright gear combo stripped away all pretense of hi-fi
and replaced it with life and sunlight. I know it's cliché
to mention that the zero feedback/SET amps remove
electronic haze but it is true in this case. The Wright amps
did just that. Fingers on guitars strings and bows across
violin strings sounded incredibly lifelike, particularly on
Willie Nelson's Somewhere Over the Rainbow LP (Colum-bia
FC 36883). The entire album is a minimalist's dream
with no electric stuff nor drums and Chesky-like clarity.
This album is Willie and some good old boys picking
classics in what sounds like live takes and no overdubs.
Here the WPA shined like no other amp I've had on the big
Klipsch. Willie's voice was presented in such a lush and
forward three-dimensionality that he stands in front of you
as opposed to the more common "you are there, looking in
through a window" non-sense. Willie is here baby, yeah! In
the living room. If you're toes aren't tapping when Willie
and the boys break into "Exactly Like You" check your
pulse.
I must also report that the Wright combo images like no
other equipment I've heard on the K-horns. Perhaps I
should say that the combo got the hell out of the way of the
image because much like fine optics, I've come to think
that, as a general rule, the image is always there. It's just
that the more optics/electronics you throw in its way, the
worse the image. But whatever the case , these things
image like a mo-fo. Not only
did the K-horns image well side
to side, the Wright combo
enabled them to have front to
back depth (a common criticism
of K-horns is that they don't
image front to back) In fact, if
your speakers won't image with
this Wright combo, chop them
into firewood 'cause they ain't
no good as speakers!
The phono preamp is an incredible bargain considering
it is part of the $749.00 price of the WPL10V. Because the
preamp did not have a tape out I could not truly test the
phono stage unto itself. Be that as it may, it proved an
excellent match with the much-underrated Shure
V15VxMR. Vocals were forward and centered solidly when
recorded that way. The lush presentation of female voices,
notably Tori Amos' "Cornflake Girl" from the Under the
Pink LP (Warner UK pressing) revealed every breath-and
Tori knows how to use her breath, grrrrrrrrrrr-she took
and every heretofor unnoticed inflection. As far as I can
tell there are no provisions to adjust loading short of
soldering in new components. And I did experience a slight
hum when turned to the phono input and I touched the
volume controls. Grounding problems? I dunno but it
occurred only when I touched the volume knobs would
never be noticeable on <98db/w/m speaks.
As a linestage the WPL10V
offered no surprises. It is not
as edgy as the ARC LS-7 can
occasionally be but does not
seem to sacrifice delicate
information in trade. How
George Wright pulled this off I
really don't know. Talk
between sources (tested by
playing a CD and then
changing the selector to another input channel) was
incredibly low. Again bettering the ARC LS-7. I don't
personally care for dual volume controls and would prefer
to see an Alps stereo pot or some such arrangement but I
can't argue with results.
I am having extreme difficulty describing what the
Wright combo sounds like because it gets so far out of the
way of the sound. In terms of transient response I know of
no peers. In terms of getting close to the performers, Leon
Redbone's version of "I Ain't Got Nobody" from his Whis-tling
in the Wind CD (Private Music P2 2117) got down-right
spooky what with being able to hear his lips move
and subtle groans that I never heard after dozens of times
hearing this tune. The Wright stuff presents music in such
a live fashion-minus the cyclic compression and fluff of
typical hi-fi gear-that it's almost unfair to call it stereo
equipment. It's more than that.
One phenomenon I noticed with the Wright gear that is
worth reporting is a lack of sensitivity of cable choice. I did
prefer to use the AQ speaker and interconnect wire but I
got satisfactory results with the original Monster Cable
running to the speaks and some basic Monster M350
interconnect. Typically I'd hear a great deal of difference,
switching between cables but in this case the difference
was much less pronounced. I had to call George Wright
and ask him about this. He acknowledged it and attributed
it to lack of introduced feedback in his circuitry. Roger
that!

So is it good stuff?
At this point I need to remind faithful readers that this
is relatively inexpensive, hand made gear! I did not make
any excuses for it's price and held it up to some very
esteemed products. The question I kept asking myself was
not whether this stuff was better for the money, rather was
this stuff better period. In many ways the answer was yes.
In everyway that is important to me now the Wright gear
bettered much more expensive stuff. If I really wanted to
"rock" and "punch out the jams booy" I would probably
turn to the VT60 for muscle. The VT60 can "hammer" and
"slam" in a way the Wright stuff can't. But for critical
listening and for acoustic music bring on the Wright. A
properly voiced ultralinear for the bass horn and this 2A3
SET for the mids and highs in a bi-amp configuration on
the K-horns-- heaven!
If you buy audio gear for the thick face plates and ten-ounce
volume knobs you'll not consider Wright Sound
Company. The Wright equipment uses good stuff like
Hovland capacitors and Noble pots but it's in no danger of
winning beauty awards. Maybe a signature edition, eh
George? With big-ass iso feet things and Babinga-wood
side panels. And as I've mentioned, I'm none too fond of
the dual volume control arrangement. I would like to see
some high-end jacks, lugs, etc., mounted on a bullet-proof
plate due to my constant plugging-in and unplugging gear.
Small picks indeed for such wonderful products. I
heartily endorse the design skills of George Wright. Wright
Sound Company's WPA 3.5 Monoblocks and the WPL10V
combo does for SET amplification what the original NAD
3020 did for entry level gear back in the early '80s.

REVIEW: Wright Sound Company WPA 3.5 Amplifier (Tube) Review by jwg at Audio Asylum