Re: "The TUBE Sound?"

OTL Asylum

OTL, Output Transformerless Amplifier User Group.

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In Reply to: Re: "The TUBE Sound?" posted by Lew on February 26, 2001 at 10:45:30:

Hi Lew,
Whats next? Driving speakers from preamp tubes! Mine are 108 dB, I'm going to build an amp with the 6H30pi on the output! Heck, I can try Bernings 600$ ZOTL now, I hear it sounds great.
Anyhow, the SET/OTL thing. Well, you know I used to be a die hard OTL fan. I still love them, my problem was I couldn't take the heat in my unconditioned house, and worse I needed MORE power for my Maggies. I've heard my OTL with Quads and its not my cup of tea. I really like how the Maggie rounds out the tone of the OTL, just a touch. Its a great combination, 'cept you really need to drive them with a MA-1 or greater, which doesn't work in my house (in the summer at least.)
So I've discovered that SET land maybe not as evil as I thought, and horns aren't that evil either ;) The thing with horns is, they really take a LOT of tweaking to get them right. It took Kurt a year to get them right, they are so sensitive. For instance, he angles the mid driver down a bit, which balances the mids with the highs much better. Also he prefers a smooth, warm sound which help this. A bad horn sounds REALLY bad, but if you can get it right, you would not believe the results. And running low powered amps does require high efficiency speakers.
Now why are folks going to lower power? Note that its tied to the parafeed thing also. This is a technique where you block DC through the output transformer. So, small transformer, very high quality permalloy can be used because of the DC blocking, low output power so it can be even smaller, and what do you get? The transformer starts to disappear. What effect does a cartridge step up transformer have? Very little, it maybe loses a touch of detail, and smooths things out. Put one on you output and you nearly get the results of an OTL, plus you get class A, and no push pull.
Sorry for the talk, this is an OTL board and I was just checking in to see what my old friends are doing. But I'm beginning to believe that the low power SET movement is really a movement to get rid of the effects of the output iron - thats what my ears are telling me at least.
Dan

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Follow Ups Full Thread

Topic - "The TUBE Sound?" - Tom G 16:17:08 02/22/01 (12)

TU BE OR NOT TU BE - tubeglow 14:21:37 02/24/01 (0)

Re: "The TUBE Sound?" - Garland 10:52:15 02/23/01 (0)

Re: "The TUBE Sound?" - Lew 07:09:40 02/23/01 (7)

Re: "The TUBE Sound?" - Tom G 10:42:57 02/23/01 (6)

Re: "The TUBE Sound?" - Dan 09:10:14 02/25/01 (4)

Re: "The TUBE Sound?" - Lew 10:45:30 02/26/01 (3)

Re: "The TUBE Sound?" - Dan 16:28:48 02/26/01 (2)

Re: "The TUBE Sound?" - Paul Speltz 12:16:56 02/28/01 (0)

Re: "The TUBE Sound?" - Lew 07:00:32 02/27/01 (0)

Re: "The TUBE Sound?" - Lew 15:08:02 02/23/01 (0)

Re: "The TUBE Sound?" - Keith 02:19:25 02/23/01 (1)

Re: "The TUBE Sound?" - mark 06:54:14 02/23/01 (0)

Follow Ups

Re: "The TUBE Sound?" - Dan 16:28:48 02/26/01 (2)

Re: "The TUBE Sound?" - Paul Speltz 12:16:56 02/28/01 (0)

Re: "The TUBE Sound?" - Lew 07:00:32 02/27/01 (0)

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