OTL Asylum

Posted by Fred J (A) on March 10, 2005 at 12:38:47

In Reply to: Re: didja try http://thetubestore.com/sovtek6c19.html ? posted by Ralph on March 1, 2005 at 10:33:33:

You're at least partially correct, my TS T-16 OTL has a compliment of 16 of those puppies, they're apparently a Russian military tube designed for Mig Foxbats and perhaps other of Ivan's aircraft, as a result they're reputed to be very durable and stable(they'd have to be with the temperature variations and G forces etc) and non microphonic, etc.
Bruce Rosenblitt Transcendent Sound)was impressed with them enough to design this amp and I suppose it's more powerful predicessor T-8 as well from the ground up around these Mig tubes.
I've just started using it yesterday afternoon and playing around with different preamps, so it'll take a week or so before I'll feel like I could render an an accurate balanced jusdgement, but so far if anything it's cleaner than my 45 SET AMP (which is no mean feat) and it's 15 watt's/ch seem more like the 75 watts/ch. of my Solid state Moon 1.5 Integrated. the Power supply, Preamp, and rectifier consists of 1 each 12au7,12ax7 and 12at7 per side respectively and they are a motley assortment of generic Chinese and Yugo tubes, I'm going to dig out or buy some decent NOS tubes,just to make me feel better ;-)
but I believe it's a truly great amp and sounds WAY better than it would seem to have any right to for the money and I am however still a pretty ignorant tube amplification nephyte, it's amazingly tolerant of the SS pre's I've tried it with, and sounds incredible to me, then again my little 45 SET was about 1.2 or 3 watts/ch and clearly not fully adequate for my Fostex 208 driven DIY(98 or 99 db)TQWT's for anything beyond modest nearfield listening.
egards FredJ