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In Reply to: What make a transformer good ? posted by Rune on February 21, 2007 at 02:35:00:
Rune,All output transformers are good. Everyone of them. The original one's that come from the commercial marketplace during the 40's and 50's were designed for a specific set of tubes with a specific set of components in a specific circuit by some truly smart and knowledgeable designers of transformers. These narrowly defined transformers can work amazingly well, if you use them as originally intended. So, if a particular transformer does not sound "good" it is likely due to not being used in the circumstances it was designed for and even the multi use transformers have a "best" set of operating parameters.
Some manufacturers did and others still do provide multi tap wider usage products for the DIY market and some of those even sound quite good. The current range of manufacturers also supply some of this need with Lundahl probably being fore most. Sowter makes very very good products also.
However, what you need to do, to get the best performance from anyone's offerings is to adapt your circuit, components and tube manufacturer choice to the available off the shelf products, or go in search of someone willing and able to flex their designs to suit your needs.
Means you really are going to have to spend some time in driver circuit performance modification, feeding am output power circuit you know and trust. Then you need to move on to power tubes and outputs and explore that ground, in one topology at a time.
Just asking for who is good is not going to get you anything but frustrated, primarily because there are no words you can use to describe what you are personally looking for, to a transformer designer. You need to be able to specify the parameters in the terms of usage that allow any competent designer to characterize your needs in electrical terms and functions.
danlaudionut is quite correct when he says use what you are familiar with, but you need to use it with the intention of exploring the circuit designs and components that surround and modify what the known set up provides. Lot's of very interesting work if you are up for it.
Follow Ups:
Ma, come quick! I'm gonna grab me a big ole' chunka pig iron an'
wrap it all up with some bailin' wire --cause it jus aint'
possble to makes a "Bad" transformer! --I heard they're all
good'ns! Eureka!-T.M.
n fur shur at ole pig iurn z gud nuf tu lykle don neyd no baylin ware needer jez de pig whudl fid tru da hoal nda fenz dere
I personally know a guy who has used door bell transformers and out-performed other amps with really "good" outputs in them. Bud is generally correct here, the circuits are all worse than the output iron is what I like to say.
Hi Jeff,Mmmmmmm well maybe not quite that biased, from my point of view. As an example, you can take an amorphous core Lundahl SE ouput and put it in an amp with the finest passive components, hand wired , with really expensive 300 B, or your choice of Golden Lions, all point to point connected, with an instrumentation ground scheme and have that amp sound thin on sudden transients, sharp and murky on midrange tones and loose and thick on Bass, because you used a solid core thin plastic wire for the grounds. It isn't the circuit nor is it the wickedly fast OPT that is causing the poor sonics. It's the lousy ratio of copper wire surface area to dielectric mass in the ground wire. When you go back to Greg's lift those extra ground wires and give a listen. Then go find some true Litz wire, with insulated strands and all, slip it into some shrink tubing that fits closely and replace all of the ground wires in his amp. You will be edumacated bout dielectrics, electrostatic moments of coupling to dielectrics and likely how much surface area to dielectric mass is too much.
Just a thought experiment here, but I do exactly this when an OPT or IT that should be just fine is not. And also when I am faced with modern single sided PCB's, with no poured grounds and poor or zero dielectric on what grounds they have, cd players of all persuasions come to mind.
Yes!, Greg is gonna rebuild the 245 amp with PROPER wiring, of course, after hearing and understanding the wire-consequences on grounds in a SEer !!
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