Success... another Ultimate Gem is playing tunes! Thanks again, Maynard, for sharing your hard-earned knowledge and expertise, creating this design. I can see that the biggest weakness I have going on with my new low-wattage system is my 90.5 dB desktop speakers. Set to max output, these 4fe35, faital, 4 inch single drivers speakers are loud enough for some good, relaxing listening but I won’t be rockin’ The house. (Maynard’s and Jeff’s earlier comments on speaker efficiency were spot-on). These faital drivers only have a few hours break-in and they have a reputation for being light on bass and sometimes “shrill” on the top. Playing music with piano instrumentals, some of the notes are definitely overly shrill. Playing other music, the U Gem is VERY nicely detailed. I can hope, with some more break-in, these speakers will improve somewhat. I still need to try some of my other speakers with the U Gem, but my other speakers are even less efficient.
As has been said the U Gem has very little background noise. With volume at max and ear up to the speaker I hear zero hum.
Silly me, when I ordered tubes for the U Gem I didn’t order extras for rollin’... I only have the three GE tubes.
that’s all for now... I have more ‘sperimenting and listening to do.
Pete