Klipsch Announcements

Actually, that has been my thought. Which do you think sounds "better?" Mind you, Shaky has not yet convinced me to go back to vinyl, so CDs through LSIIs are the usual path. Thanks in advance.

A little rambling about tubes. The coating of the cathode in the tube is what separates a good tube from a not so good one. Something the old maker of tubes did so well. What makes Western Electric tubes so sought after and highly prized. It was their highly guarded secrete sauce they perfected back in the day when tubes ruled. The late Roger Modjeski said he once went to a European country that made what he thought was excellent sounding tubes. He saw the vat they mixed the ingredients in and they let it sit overnight every time. He said he did not know what was in the vat that made the tubes sound so good. He said it could have been the janitor urinating in the vat overnight that made them sound good.  This was said in his lecture at a Burning Amp Festival held yearly. Made me laugh. 

About a year ago I bought a small pair of British monitors to play around with. I was impressed by the smooth response, wide soundstage, and even dispersion of sound throughout the room. However, the speakers are now in storage because ultimately they sounded like speakers and not like music. As a musician, I know what live music sounds like; if I was led blindfolded into a room with music playing, cones-and-domes would never fool me into thinking it was a live performance.  A blindfold and some Khorns; well, it is startling how well they can approximate a live performance (Dave Brubeck, Take Five at live levels, anyone?). I think a lot of the issue with even some of the quite well designed, non-horn speakers is the lack of dynamics that is ever present in a live performance.   (I do realize IM distortion is also a factor, but that issue has ties to efficiency and in turn dynamics…)   Interestingly, getting the dynamics right when playing a piano score is very important; it has a tremendous impact on how good the piece sounds during a performance. The same goes for speakers.   Reproducing music that is not faithful (“fidelity”) to the live performance from which it was recorded is “non-fidelity” and therefore a form of distortion per Mr. Paul Klipsch. 

I glanced over the article this morning and I like it. Looks like an excellent little simple circuit and easy to build with a good write up on how to. Great find Hanks. I like to find articles like this one. New one for me and I am looking forward to reading the article more closely later. I like these kind of things. 🙂

Got a chuckle from me this morning with that post Travis. 

Sitting in my backyard yesterday I got to thinking about that ol' boy Deckert of Decware. He has took a little amplifier such as this one and made a good business from selling it. Selling those little things as fast as he can make them. I see he also sells some Cadillacs too but he is selling a lot more Chevrolets. He is doing this with an old surplus Russian made for something else tube. The thing about the Russian 6P15 tube is if you tie 2 of those pins together you make a Russian 14 tube which is a substitute for the EL84. That 6P14 tube is now as expensive as a new production EL84 but you can still buy the 15 tube cheap. He now has a good source for the output tubes. He is also using a Russian 6P1 tube for the pre tube. Probably because of the price and hey it works alright. Someone has already posted in this thread he thinks it is possible to get 2 watts from this 6Y6 tube. Not that I think you need it with our speakers but saying 2 watts instead of 1 would make it sell better. Russian surplus tube or good ol' USA made for audio tube. Decide for yourself. Do not get me wrong. I have two amplifiers I have built with the 6P15 tube. One a clone of the Zen and the other a PP one. Both sound really good but to me the 6Y6 tube sounds better. The active device is what sound is all about whether tube or transistor. All those other parts of the amplifier are there to just make that active device work and sound best. Not to flavor the sound of the active device. In theory they sound be neutral as far as contributing to the sound and not add anything.   My personal Sweetie uses Nos RCA 6Y6's along with NOS Jan 6SJ7's. This one I am building for a build guide for a Area51 is going to have NOS Westinghouse 6Y6's along with some NOS 6SJ7's made in England tubes. I bet money they are NOS Mullard made. Those NOS Mullard tubes are like gold. I bought them for this build and this build they will go but I would sure like to have a pair of them for my personal Sweetie. And yes Area51 has already spoken for this amp. Even offered to send me the money already. I am going to wait to see if I can still build a good sounding tube amplifier before taking any money. Hey it has been 2 or 3 years since I have built one. We talked about a wood case and he agreed to pay an extra $100 for it. I see a guy on Ebay building wood cases for those old 70 receivers charging $300 and getting buyers. I think $100 is a fair price along with $100 for putting the parts together for the amplifier. If someone thinks I am making money they are in worse shape than me and I can feel sorry for them. I am just doing this for something constructive to do in my retirement years to have fun. That is the reason I am just taking my time building it. As much for fun for me as the guy who is getting it. At least I hope he likes it after he gets. I will not sell it if I do not like the sound it makes but I still think I am able to build it. At least today I do.    That ol' Deckert is sure doing good for himself building a cheap no frills little amplifier. Some enterprising young man could do the same thing. Seems to be a market for such a little amp. Deckert got some colorful youtube guy to praise his amplifier and his sales have taken off. Wonder if he had to wine and dine him. Smart guy who has a made a good little business for himself. Lot easier turning out simple amplifiers for a profit, and a lot of them, than complicated builds with fewer sales. If the market is out there for them they will sale. I am too old to start doing such a thing. I like my simple life now at 73. But something for a young man to think about though. Good way to earn a few extra bucks every month.    Maynard and I talked about doing something like this thread years ago. I have not built a tube amplifier in 2 or 3 years. The last year or so I have been buying some old not working receivers on Ebay and fixing and restoring them with new capacitors. So I am rusty along with getting older and more forgetful. Some of you guys with good eyes following this thread should have said something about that earth ground. Like hey Henry do not forget to run a wire from the center pin of the IEC to the chassis. I might need some more help on this build guide along the way. Keep your eyes open for me and when I post a picture but please do it in a constructive way and not try and hurt my feelings. Remember I am just an old man. Treat me like your Grandfather. Be easy on me.    Captain is the only one who has spoken of a different way of wiring the transformer. Smart guys find better ways of doing things and Captain seems to be a smart guy. But I am going to keep this build simple using the KISS system. I am teaching my grandson to build his first amplifier (not actually) and I think it easier to tell him to tie the two white wires of the PS transformer together and do the same with the two yellow wires and then attach them to the center pins of the bridge rectifier. After all we just want to turn AC to DC using the bridge rectifier. After filtering the DC through our CRCL, the output transformer is our L, network for the 6Y6 and through a CRCRC network for the 6SJ7 I think it the DC will be plenty good enough. At least it is with my personal Sweetie. The bridge rectifier has four pins one marked + then two pins marked with little ss' for the AC lines of the transformer to attach to, then a - pin.

We have had some more „input“ from PMcG.     

Well let's see.  The super rare DBX BXI of which I was running two of at one point.  The Nakamichi PA-7II, Yahama MX-1000U, Onkyo M508 Grand Integra also come to mind.  

The concern isn't so much that the low end is rolled off, it's the distortion figure at low frequencies from core saturation. But yes since the circuit is only 2 watts (4Vrms/Secondary) the core isn't going to saturate as badly down at 20Hz compared to maximum rating of 8 watts (8Vrms/Secondary).   They are probably okay enough for the circuit, especially if you add feedback it will help get them most out of them. I know tinkerers like these transformers because they are "universal" but I remember not really liking them when I tried them a long time ago. They sell for $60 each! For $2 more you can get a nicer 80mA transformer from Edcor with end bells. Just my opinion, I'd take the Edcor over the 125CSE any day of the week.   https://edcorusa.com/collections/tube-amplifier-single-ended-output-transformer/products/gxse10-5k-10w-5k-ohms-single-ended-guitar-tube-output-transformer-1