Comments on: Listening to music in a vacuum--or why some audiophiles love the sound of tube amplifiers
The Audiophiliac checks out the magical sound of flea powered vacuum tube amplifiers.
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About The Audiophiliac
Ex movie theater projectionist Steve Guttenberg has more or less successfully hitched his future to home theater, but he still pines for the clickity-clack of 35 MM projectors and all the stale popcorn he could eat. Between projectionist gigs he worked as a high-end audio salesman for sixteen years, and produced records for an audiophile label. Oh, and one more thing, nothing annoys Steve more than being confused with the other Steve Guttenberg, the washed-up Police Academy actor. The wordsmith Guttenberg is a frequent contributor to a number of magazines and websites including Home Entertainment, Playback, and Ultimate AV. He is a member of the CNET Blog Network and is not an employee of CNET. Disclosure.
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I do give credit to Bob Danielak for his assistance on this project on my website(tubesusa.com) under "George's Corner". I had worked via email with Bob for about a month on this "Darling" design. It is Bob's dual 1626 circuit used in conjuction with my very own power supply. Bob Danielak's name was discussed, but Steve forgot to mention it in his blog. Thank you for the oversight on this matter
Best Regards,
George
Kevin
- by savagesteve13 January 3, 2008 5:52 PM PST
- You would think with all the 3rd world nations that still use vacuum tubes, people would be smarter than to pay $2500 for a 4-watt amplifier. The old Russian tube factories can probably get you a good one for about 50 rubles.
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- by make_or_break January 4, 2008 6:26 AM PST
- Building a better mousetrap is usually more than the sum of its cheap parts. While I'd also have to swallow pretty hard before justifying two-and-a-half large for a 2 WPC amp let alone actually [i]buying[/i] one, the slack I'd ultimately cut is that these units are actually well-designed, well-crafted specialty pieces. I've heard some pretty poor-sounding tube units in my time, from cheap to not-so, so it's not all that outrageous to expect that when someone handcrafts an amplifier that is a performer to boot, it's likely going to be spendy. Yet when it comes down to what's 'expensive' is all relative; when it comes to that bizarre stratosphere that audiophiles typically play in, dropping $2500 for something...anything...is often considered a non-event.
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(5 Comments)That being said, I've also heard some fairly affordable recent units out of China that are far cheaper to be had. Given their sourcing, exclusivity isn't really their norm but I'd easily opt for a decent to excellent-sounding mass-produced analog room warmer from Shanghai over most supposedly state-of-the-art solid-state amps anytime.