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I did it. I tubed the Cornwalls.


Lemon string

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So I got the audion sterling 12w class a amp I had posted about a few days ago.

All I can say is holys$#@! We had two other couples over for new years last night. Among the crowd there were a couple of real skeptics in the room concerning that there would be a significant audible difference between the new little tube amp and my ss adcom gfa 2535 amp. So we started with the ss amp for an hour or so letting everyone get a taste of the cornwalls II, which are relatively new to my home. We then plugged in the tube amp and A/B'd the amps with a couple of tracks. My wife, the biggest skeptic in the room, couldn't believe the difference. Everyone present was pretty astonished. When we first switched from the tubes back to the ss adcom everyone looked at one another and asked what happened? whered the music go? This is what we were first listening to?? The ss got yanked real quick.

Long story short Im psyched about the purchase! This is my first tube amp and I have no regrets.

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Tubes are magical, I tells ya!!!

I had tubes on my Khorns in my 20's. McIntosh 240, Marantz 8b (my fave), Harmon Kardon Citation, Scott, Dynaco Mk III, etc. They all TROUNCED the SS amps of the the day. BUT, after Dr. Matti Otala discovered that SS amps need to address Transient Intermodulation Distortion (TIM) with his paper published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, all of the solid state amps had improved by the 1980's.

Back in 1977, I met Saul Marantz himself at a Hi Fi show in Detroit and spent more than my fair share of time with him. He had sold his company to Superscope of Japan and was VP of Sales/Marketing for Dahlquist. They were running tubes on the Dalquist and SOLID STATE on the outboard Subwoofer section. I asked him why? He said that tubes were great on midrange and treble with their desirable even order harmonics behavior (what you all are preferring on the Cornwalls) but he felt that any woofer section had better transient response (better motor control) with the inherent lower source impedance of transformerless Solid State Amplifiers. Also, he said it was less expensive to Bi-Amp this way, since you could get more "woofer watts" a lot cheaper, with better overall performance.

Since you still have your Adcom, I would suggest you match the VOLTAGE gain of both amps somehow and split off the woofer section, so you can drive the horns with the tubes and the woofer section with the Adcom. Then you can do a post to say Saul Marantz was RIGHT!!

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Tubes are magical, I tells ya!!!

I had tubes on my Khorns in my 20's. McIntosh 240, Marantz 8b (my fave), Harmon Kardon Citation, Scott, Dynaco Mk III, etc. They all TROUNCED the SS amps of the the day. BUT, after Dr. Matti Otala discovered that SS amps need to address Transient Intermodulation Distortion (TIM) with his paper published in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society, all of the solid state amps had improved by the 1980's.

Back in 1977, I met Saul Marantz himself at a Hi Fi show in Detroit and spent more than my fair share of time with him. He had sold his company to Superscope of Japan and was VP of Sales/Marketing for Dahlquist. They were running tubes on the Dalquist and SOLID STATE on the outboard Subwoofer section. I asked him why? He said that tubes were great on midrange and treble with their desirable even order harmonics behavior (what you all are preferring on the Cornwalls) but he felt that any woofer section had better transient response (better motor control) with the inherent lower source impedance of transformerless Solid State Amplifiers. Also, he said it was less expensive to Bi-Amp this way, since you could get more "woofer watts" a lot cheaper, with better overall performance.

Since you still have your Adcom, I would suggest you match the VOLTAGE gain of both amps somehow and split off the woofer section, so you can drive the horns with the tubes and the woofer section with the Adcom. Then you can do a post to say Saul Marantz was RIGHT!!

That would be a interesting way to go for sure........... My sub, a rw12, has a 200w ss amp in it so I suppose to some extent I am sort of doing that. I have my crossover set to 50hz presently but I could walk it back up to 80hz i suppose.

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