Audiophile grade capacitors- a tubes only affectation?

[Fjd]

The audiophool industry has everyone thinking there are magical components out there that will drastically change your gear.

 

 

 

Funny, it seems that each side of the "argument" in the audiophool industry sure like to throw up their own strawmen in trying to validate their respective positions. 

 

The ABX crowd will focus on the outlier aspect of “greatly improving the sound” cannot be validated through the use of what I believe to be poorly constructed ABX tests.  In my limited experience, I like to disregard and disqualify the outliers or extreme points of view and when I hear the assertion of “greatly improving the sound,” I find that the assertion usually means some aspect of the amplifier design is crap or poorly implemented, and not necessarily an imaginary improvement.  Personally, I like to find a better well-engineered circuit design and overall over-built build quality using the appropriate high-quality parts over trying to massage the sound through expensive caps, cables and power cords.

 

Overall, I suspect that corporate goals caused the development of vacuum tube amplifiers to stagnate during the 1950s and eventually give way to solid state because the vacuum tube technology had reached a point of “good enough” for the consumer with no real financial reason to improve upon.  Not really much different than consumer products today.

 

It really wasn’t until the very early 1990s when it seemed that we in the United States started to witness some original thinking in vacuum tube amplification.  Of course, Jean Hiraga was one of the early proponents during the late 1970s and 1980s of single-ended circuits and direct-heated triode tubes but with the way the audio review magazines took a turn in the US in the way reviews were conducted, it took a while for this original thinking to filter to the U.S.   For those curious about the history and want to read articles where I believe that DHT started to gain traction in the U.S., track down old issues of Glass Audio, Vacuum Tube Valley and Sound Practices.

 

Whether a person likes the Cary Audio amps or maybe a person does not like the Cary Audio amps, it doesn't really matter for this post as I believe that someone like Dennis Had, founder of Cary Audio is a real pioneer in DHT SET in the U.S. since he was able to build a brand on the back of the 300B DHT tube in a single-ended circuit. 

 

Fast forward to today and it seems that many of the commercially available DHT designs are not well-engineered and just seem to be thrown into the market in an attempt to meet the “good enough” criteria.  I’m not sure that many understand the importance of the power supply, the input stage, and the driver stage in a direct-heated triode design.  So many of the commercial designs today seem to have under spec’d power supplies and seem like crap where the driver stage is concerned where the driver stage will introduce more distortion than the DHT output tube.

 

Edited August 8, 2015 by Fjd

[Jim Naseum]

no one here knew any "hifi nuts" back in the 50s? wow.

 

our family had a friend who was obsessed with woofers and tweeters and stuff constantly. he had wires and speakers all ovetr thr room. it was 1957.

 

obsessions occure when opportunities are made available. i think the forumula looks like this:

 

interest + spare money + spare time + opportunity/availablity = OBSESSION

 

took my 12 year old nephew to a rc car race trak once with his $50 rc car. what a joke. the track was lined with 50 year old MEN who had invested $thousands of dollars in highkly specialyzed part, bnatteties, test gear, tools, premium car parts and the like. Guys makingh 6-figires income with oodles of money to waste on toys. that's when I understood obsession in hobbies!! LOL

[Coytee]

Preface:  When someone uses DHT I think that means directly heated triode.  Point being, I don't know anything about the technical stuff.

 

My take on it is you have a box of wires, a box of resistors/caps, a box of tubes and a box of various parts.

 

If someone is given a discrete list of parts (ingredients) can that list of ingredients end up making a SET amp or a higher powered amp (subject to the specific tube in the box)?

 

Seems to me that if you give me a length of lamp cord, bulb and a socket.....I can only make a lamp.  The real difference between my lamp and your lamp is mine might be decorated with candy canes and yours might be decorated with hair clippings.  The guts and process of the lamps are the same because we both started with the same parts.

 

Is a box of amp parts kind of restricted like this or is their more leeway because you can configure the path of the wires differently?

 

(see what a simpleton some of us are?!!)

[Guest thesloth]

Preface:  When someone uses DHT I think that means directly heated triode.  Point being, I don't know anything about the technical stuff.

 

My take on it is you have a box of wires, a box of resistors/caps, a box of tubes and a box of various parts.

 

If someone is given a discrete list of parts (ingredients) can that list of ingredients end up making a SET amp or a higher powered amp (subject to the specific tube in the box)?

 

Seems to me that if you give me a length of lamp cord, bulb and a socket.....I can only make a lamp.  The real difference between my lamp and your lamp is mine might be decorated with candy canes and yours might be decorated with hair clippings.  The guts and process of the lamps are the same because we both started with the same parts.

 

Is a box of amp parts kind of restricted like this or is their more leeway because you can configure the path of the wires differently?

 

(see what a simpleton some of us are?!!)

 

 

My thoughts are if you give three engineers each a box of parts to use they would come up with three different amps. IF they were given specific tubes and transformers the designs might be similar but not exactly the same. There are lots of ways to skin an amplifier;)

Edited August 8, 2015 by thesloth

[tube fanatic]

 

 

 

Overall, I suspect that corporate goals caused the development of vacuum tube amplifiers to stagnate during the 1950s and eventually give way to solid state because the vacuum tube technology had reached a point of “good enough” for the consumer with no real financial reason to improve upon.  Not really much different than consumer products today.

 

 

I don't agree with this statement at all.  The fifties actually heralded the era of terrific tube amps, with lots of advances coming through.  One example, of course, is ultralinear and all the amps which employed that mode of operation.  In addition, kit amps, such as Heathkits, offered excellent sound for the money and allowed those who were interested in high quality sound on a budget to actually be able to afford it.  TV repair shops often generated extra revenue by assembling Heathkits (and other kits) for people lacking the skills to do it on their own.  And, even with paying for the labor to have the kit professionally assembled, the cost was lower than commercially built equipment (in addition, some of my own bench time circa 1960 and later was spent fixing kit amps which people built but couldn't get to work).  In terms of speakers, the options were vast with companies like Cabinart offering all kinds of solutions (including the Klipsch Rebel series).  I had many customers who weren't audiophiles in the sense of the current definition, but who wanted high quality sound and had speakers which allowed it to be achieved.  The changeover to solid state was ultimately one of economics (it was cheaper to produce).  The early SS equipment wasn't wonderful sonically and I had many customers, and knew many people, who gave it a try only to go back to tubes for the sound quality they provided.

 

http://www.itishifi.com/search/label/cabinart

 

http://www.oestex.com/tubes/ul.html

 

Maynard

[Fjd]

 

 

 

 

Overall, I suspect that corporate goals caused the development of vacuum tube amplifiers to stagnate during the 1950s and eventually give way to solid state because the vacuum tube technology had reached a point of “good enough” for the consumer with no real financial reason to improve upon.  Not really much different than consumer products today.

 

 

I don't agree with this statement at all.  The fifties actually heralded the era of terrific tube amps, with lots of advances coming through.  One example, of course, is ultralinear and all the amps which employed that mode of operation.  In addition, kit amps, such as Heathkits, offered excellent sound for the money and allowed those who were interested in high quality sound on a budget to actually be able to afford it.  TV repair shops often generated extra revenue by assembling Heathkits (and other kits) for people lacking the skills to do it on their own.  And, even with paying for the labor to have the kit professionally assembled, the cost was lower than commercially built equipment (in addition, some of my own bench time circa 1960 and later was spent fixing kit amps which people built but couldn't get to work).  In terms of speakers, the options were vast with companies like Cabinart offering all kinds of solutions (including the Klipsch Rebel series).  I had many customers who weren't audiophiles in the sense of the current definition, but who wanted high quality sound and had speakers which allowed it to be achieved.  The changeover to solid state was ultimately one of economics (it was cheaper to produce).  The early SS equipment wasn't wonderful sonically and I had many customers, and knew many people, who gave it a try only to go back to tubes for the sound quality they provided.

 

http://www.itishifi.com/search/label/cabinart

 

http://www.oestex.com/tubes/ul.html

 

Maynard

 

 

 

 

I understand the aspect of what you are looking at and the point of view in relation to your participation in the consumer market during those years and generally agree; however, you may have misunderstood what I am getting at in my post by taking the small excerpt you quoted and losing the context of the remainder of the post. 

 

Essentially, from what I can see in the consumer offerings of that time period the industry appeared to quickly become monopolized by the Williamson, Mullard and Dynaco "type" or "style" circuits and not much of anything groundbreaking in relation to tube amplifier circuits made available to the general consumer after those implementations. 

 

Please remember I'm talking about the market place from the point of the general consumer sales of amplifiers with Williamson, Mullard and Dynaco type circuits and looking at the gap until the 1990s and not just new aspects of those same circuits.  Here is where I look at a company like Cary Audio developing a 300B DHT implementation and selling to the general consumer market or a guy like Bruce Rozenblit exploring OTL designs and selling them to the general consumer market or the Bottlehead guys exploring parafeed circuits and selling to the general consumer market.  There are others such as Jack Elliano's Electra-Print DRD implementations using tubes such as the 45, 2A3 and 300B that I could list but hopefully these specific examples give a sense of what I was trying to articulate with circuit design, innovation and implementation that did not exist in the 1950s.

 

Part of what triggered these observations and thoughts was reading the thread titled "Why do SETs sound so good" in the Talkin' Tubes forum where some have discussed many of the positives and some of the negatives of this type of circuit implementation.  Part of my overall observations related to the fact that the DHT SET circuits, OTL circuits and parafeed circuit configurations just were not being explored to the fullest potential in the 1950s during the time the Williamson, Mullard and Dynaco type circuits were dominating the consumer market place. 

 

Why I started to think about questioning if the "good enough" syndrome may have SET [pun intended] in with the proliferation of the Williamson, Mullard and Dynaco circuits is primarily because those circuits I listed such as DHT SET, OTL and parafeed all existed in the 1950s [and many still claim today to be the best and purest available in sound reproduction as found in the 'why do SETs sound so good' thread, among hundreds of other places on the net making similar claims] and many of our high efficiency speakers today are based on the high efficiency speaker technology that was available during the 1950s.  The pieces and parts were there and it just seems that more could have been done with DHT SET, OTL and parafeed in the 1950s. 

 

Why wasn't DHT SET, OTL and parafeed not explored to the fullest potential during the 1950s and why did the Williamson, Mullard and Dynaco circuits dominate given the high efficiency speaker technology that exited in the 1950s combined with the subjective aspects of better sound with DHT SET, OTL and parafeed?  It sure seems like a winning formula. Could it have been corporate decision making on what would penetrate the consumer market to the greatest level or something else driving the situation?

 

I mentioned that I thought the 1950s could have brought with it an era where corporate goals caused the development of vacuum tube amplifiers to stagnate and eventually give way to solid state because the vacuum tube technology based on Williamson, Mullard and Dynaco circuit implementations had reached a point of “good enough” for the general consumer market.  Essentially, the corporations turned to transistor devices for various reasons, which could very well include the "good enough" concept for general consumer market where transistors could also be made "good enough" and cheaper too. 

 

Amidst all of this change in the industry going from Williamson, Mullard and Dynaco circuit implementations to transistor implementations, somewhere along the way DHT SET, OTL and parafeed were long gone and abandoned [even though many consider them among the best].  Of course, I would have loved to see engineers continue to innovate and develop some of this tube thinking and implementation but at least it got here in some respects during the 1990s.

 

Given the above, I still believe that it probably really wasn’t until the 1990s that we in the United States started to 'again' witness some original thinking in vacuum tube amplification implementations when publications such as Glass Audio, Vacuum Tube Valley and Sound Practices became mainstream. 

 

I mentioned Jean Hiraga was one of the early proponents during the late 1970s and 1980s of single-ended circuits and direct-heated triode tubes [meaning the ideas were not forever gone] because some of that information can now be found on the internet.  However, for certain reasons at that time his ideas did not immediately find the way to the U.S. until around 1990. 

 

One aspect considered today that may not have been well-understood during the 1950s was how many of the tubes that were used in the 1950s and 1960s designs demonstrated high distortion harmonics well into the 5th through the 10th harmonic that I believe could be a reason some amplifiers have that “colored” type of sound that some complain about when compared to the “new-found clarity” of the better designed solid state amplifiers (vs poorly designed ss amps). 

 

Now here is where I believe that DHTs like the 45 tube and 300B tube are somewhat unique in that these tubes demonstrate primarily 2nd distortion harmonics [the type most claim is acceptable to the ears], much lower 3rd harmonics and practically no 4th and higher harmonics that are much less acceptable to the ears.  I believe that here is the aspect that could be a primary reason why people are surprised at how a well-designed, engineered and built DHT SET amplifier with a low distortion driver stage and output stage can sound very clear with the great tone attributed to tubes. 

 

For example, I believe that with the 45 output tube combined with the low distortion 6SN7 tube in a quality circuit, and quality transformers (paired with the appropriate high efficiency speakers) were most likely instrumental in the Jeff Korneff 45 Amp arising to the legendary fame it achieved.

 

For me, the Korneff 45 implementation is one that I have not yet heard in extended listening sessions, although the design concept seems sound; however, I know that my Terraplanes and original Jack Elliano 300B DRD amps still remain some of my favorites.  I've got most of the parts for a 45 DRD implementation but do not currently have the time for it, hopefully not too far off in the horizon.  The Rosenbilt 300B OTL headphone amp is also on my bucket list.  Old ideas and innovation, yes, of course, but with some innovative current thinking/implementation on top.

 

Edited: to clarify the nuanced points and expand on the jumbled thoughts that were typed yesterday while I was grilling steak and roasting corn on charcoal.

Edited August 9, 2015 by Fjd

[Thaddeus Smith]

no one here knew any "hifi nuts" back in the 50s? wow.

 

our family had a friend who was obsessed with woofers and tweeters and stuff constantly. he had wires and speakers all ovetr thr room. it was 1957.

 

obsessions occure when opportunities are made available. i think the forumula looks like this:

 

interest + spare money + spare time + opportunity/availablity = OBSESSION

 

took my 12 year old nephew to a rc car race trak once with his $50 rc car. what a joke. the track was lined with 50 year old MEN who had invested $thousands of dollars in highkly specialyzed part, bnatteties, test gear, tools, premium car parts and the like. Guys makingh 6-figires income with oodles of money to waste on toys. that's when I understood obsession in hobbies!! LOL

I'm certain plenty of those people existed then, we just lacked the tools (Internet) to link the geographically diverse people together.

[oldtimer]

 

 

 

 

 

Overall, I suspect that corporate goals caused the development of vacuum tube amplifiers to stagnate during the 1950s and eventually give way to solid state because the vacuum tube technology had reached a point of “good enough” for the consumer with no real financial reason to improve upon.  Not really much different than consumer products today.

 

 

I don't agree with this statement at all.  The fifties actually heralded the era of terrific tube amps, with lots of advances coming through.  One example, of course, is ultralinear and all the amps which employed that mode of operation.  In addition, kit amps, such as Heathkits, offered excellent sound for the money and allowed those who were interested in high quality sound on a budget to actually be able to afford it.  TV repair shops often generated extra revenue by assembling Heathkits (and other kits) for people lacking the skills to do it on their own.  And, even with paying for the labor to have the kit professionally assembled, the cost was lower than commercially built equipment (in addition, some of my own bench time circa 1960 and later was spent fixing kit amps which people built but couldn't get to work).  In terms of speakers, the options were vast with companies like Cabinart offering all kinds of solutions (including the Klipsch Rebel series).  I had many customers who weren't audiophiles in the sense of the current definition, but who wanted high quality sound and had speakers which allowed it to be achieved.  The changeover to solid state was ultimately one of economics (it was cheaper to produce).  The early SS equipment wasn't wonderful sonically and I had many customers, and knew many people, who gave it a try only to go back to tubes for the sound quality they provided.

 

http://www.itishifi.com/search/label/cabinart

 

http://www.oestex.com/tubes/ul.html

 

Maynard

 

 

 

 

I understand the aspect of what you are looking at and the point of view and generally agree; however, you may have misunderstood what I am getting at in my post.  Essentially, the industry appeared to quickly become monopolized by the Williamson, Mullard and Dynaco type circuits and not much of anything groundbreaking after.  Please remember I'm talking about the market place and looking at the gap until the 1990s and not isolated specific things.

 

One aspect that I realize is that a lot of people do not understand how many of the tubes that were used in the 1950s and 1960s designs demonstrated high distortion harmonics well into the 5th through the 10th harmonic that I believe give the amplifier a “colored and gritty” type of sound that some complain about when compared to the “new-found clarity” of the better designed solid state amplifiers (vs poorly designed ss amps). 

 

I mentioned that I thought the 1950s and 1960s brought an era where corporate goals caused the development of vacuum tube amplifiers to stagnate and eventually give way to solid state because the vacuum tube technology had reached a point of “good enough” for the general mass market consumer.  These are market forces and big corporations at play.  Essentially, the mass market turned to transistor devices for various reasons, including the "good enough" concept for the mass market in general where transistors could be made "good enough" and cheaper too.  Of course, I would have loved to see engineers continue to innovate and develop tube thinking.

 

I still believe that it probably really wasn’t until the 1990s that we in the United States started to 'again' witness some original thinking in vacuum tube amplification when publications such as Glass Audio, Vacuum Tube Valley and Sound Practices became mainstream. 

 

It seems to me that Jean Hiraga was one of the early proponents during the late 1970s and 1980s of single-ended circuits and direct-heated triode tubes but for certain reasons his ideas did not immediately find the way to the U.S. 

 

Now here is where I believe that the 45 tube and 300B tube are somewhat unique in that these tubes demonstrate primarily 2nd distortion harmonics, much lower 3rd harmonics and practically no 4th and higher harmonics. 

 

I believe that here is a primary reason why people are surprised at how a well-designed, engineered and built DHT amplifier with a low distortion driver stage and output stage can sound very clear with the great tone attributed to tubes. 

 

For example, I believe that with the 45 output tube combined with the low distortion 6SN7 tube in a quality circuit, and quality transformers (paired with the appropriate high efficiency speakers) were most likely instrumental in the Jeff Korneff 45 Amp arising to the legendary fame it achieved.

 

For me, I know that my Terraplanes and original Jack Elano 300B DRD amps still remain some of my favorites.  Old ideas and innovation, yes, of course, but with some innovative current thinking on top.

 

I thought the idea was that caps sucked back then.  But maybe that is too on topic.

[Fjd]

 

I thought the idea was that caps sucked back then.  But maybe that is too on topic.

 

 

 

I'll never get to 5,000 that way. Old caps just aren't that interesting.

[Jim Naseum]

 

 

Honestly I think the fact that tubes are high impedance devices means that for the same time constant (RC) you need a much smaller capacitance so you have much more choices to pick from as far as dielectric composition goes. Smaller caps means better quality ones are cheaper. Ever see the size of a 10uF film cap compared to a 10uF electrolytic cap of the same voltage rating? H noUGE size and price difference!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

As I understand the idea of snake oil, it's lots of promise and just benign ingredients. If so, the greatest snake oils I can think of are Microsoft windows. "Step right up! Now the icons are rounded and shaded instead of flat and monochrome!"

Fascinating thread. Idint know so many people still relied on tube sets!!! Lol!! Where do you buy such stuff??

[Schu]

http://www.humblehomemadehifi.com/Cap.html

[tube fanatic]

 

I thought the idea was that caps sucked back then.  But maybe that is too on topic.

 

You are right- we have digressed a bit!  The issue with the caps of the 50s/60s was reliability more than anything else (I'm not including electrolytics, many of which were excellent).  Sonically they were fine.  Take, for example, the Sprague Black Beauty series of caps.  We in the service field always called them the "Black Beauties of death" because of their dismal reliability. Yet, even to this day, you will find guys selling them because of their "magical" sonics and all that crap.  I feel sorry for those who let them handle any kind of voltage!  So, in that respect at least, modern caps are certainly better.  

Maynard

Edited August 9, 2015 by tube fanatic

[minermark]

http://www.humblehomemadehifi.com/Cap.html

Anyone yelling for a Cap review should see Gold with this link, and i love their "Points" scale for judgement.

[FloridaBoy]

 

 

 

 

Overall, I suspect that corporate goals caused the development of vacuum tube amplifiers to stagnate during the 1950s and eventually give way to solid state because the vacuum tube technology had reached a point of “good enough” for the consumer with no real financial reason to improve upon.  Not really much different than consumer products today.

 

 

I don't agree with this statement at all.  The fifties actually heralded the era of terrific tube amps, with lots of advances coming through.  One example, of course, is ultralinear and all the amps which employed that mode of operation.  In addition, kit amps, such as Heathkits, offered excellent sound for the money and allowed those who were interested in high quality sound on a budget to actually be able to afford it.  TV repair shops often generated extra revenue by assembling Heathkits (and other kits) for people lacking the skills to do it on their own.  And, even with paying for the labor to have the kit professionally assembled, the cost was lower than commercially built equipment (in addition, some of my own bench time circa 1960 and later was spent fixing kit amps which people built but couldn't get to work).  In terms of speakers, the options were vast with companies like Cabinart offering all kinds of solutions (including the Klipsch Rebel series).  I had many customers who weren't audiophiles in the sense of the current definition, but who wanted high quality sound and had speakers which allowed it to be achieved.  The changeover to solid state was ultimately one of economics (it was cheaper to produce).  The early SS equipment wasn't wonderful sonically and I had many customers, and knew many people, who gave it a try only to go back to tubes for the sound quality they provided.

 

http://www.itishifi.com/search/label/cabinart

 

http://www.oestex.com/tubes/ul.html

 

Maynard

 

 

SS offered much higher power and less maintenance than tubes. Some of the early sand amps were capacitor coupled and sounded tube like. I have been in the low power tube amp HE speakers game for many years. Coupling capacitors do effect the voicing of an amplifier. *I*, like many others, like PIO's with tubes and Klipsch. There are some very good Russian Military surplus PIO caps and they are not expensive. I recently got an Inspire amp and preamp from Dennis Had. He used Russian K42-Y caps and after 100 hours or so I changed them to good old Vitamin Q PIO's. They work for me. Caps do sound different and preference depends on personal taste and the rest of your system. You don't need to spend a lot to get very good results and the only way to find out what works for you is to try a few different ones. Reviews are subjective and often amusing. I could care less about the science or engineering. Trust your ears and use what works for you.

 

Let the flames begin!

[Fjd]

 

 

I thought the idea was that caps sucked back then.  But maybe that is too on topic.

 

 

 

I'll never get to 5,000 that way. Old caps just aren't that interesting.

 

 

 

Over coffee this morning I looked at my posts to the audiophool comment by the sloth and the response to Maynard on the portion he quoted without considering the remaining portions of my post for context.

 

As I was editing to clarify certain nuances that Maynard may have missed and I poorly articulated, then expand on the jumbled thoughts that were typed yesterday while I was grilling steak and roasting corn on charcoal, it occurred to me that I could have posted snippets in both this thread and the 'why do SETs sound so good' thread since I hit on aspects that seem relevant to both and could have played this out to at least 200 posts in the quest for 5,000. 

 

I guess I'm not too good on considering the post count aspect.  Wait, coffee has a separate thread and pictures of the steak and corn in the food thread should be good for three or four more posts.  Maybe I'm on to something here.    

 

Of course, when I read those types of threads, it seems that with the additional misinterpretations that goes along with snippets of thought, the topics in those threads stray much more than this.  

 

 

Edited August 9, 2015 by Fjd

[karlson3]

I don't like the film/oil Obbligato motor run caps in my 81 K-horn - my Heresy I run KBG caps  - cheap Chinese Audiophiler caps seem

to measure well but I probably would take an old Russian mylar - maybe charge coupled for fun

 

maybe a 0.47 ohm resistor here and there would make them sound more "alike"

 

Edited August 11, 2015 by karlson3

[FloridaBoy]

no one here knew any "hifi nuts" back in the 50s? wow.

 

our family had a friend who was obsessed with woofers and tweeters and stuff constantly. he had wires and speakers all ovetr thr room. it was 1957.

 

obsessions occure when opportunities are made available. i think the forumula looks like this:

 

interest + spare money + spare time + opportunity/availablity = OBSESSION

 

took my 12 year old nephew to a rc car race trak once with his $50 rc car. what a joke. the track was lined with 50 year old MEN who had invested $thousands of dollars in highkly specialyzed part, bnatteties, test gear, tools, premium car parts and the like. Guys makingh 6-figires income with oodles of money to waste on toys. that's when I understood obsession in hobbies!! LOL

 

The 50's & 60's ? Enjoy!

 

http://www.hifilit.com/

[erik2A3]

FloridaBoy

Thanks for posting the vintage hi fi link!

[FloridaBoy]

Be sure to check out the Mad Magazine goes Hi Fi. Nothing has changed.

[FloridaBoy]

Question for some of the.....  more experienced in the crowd....(older)

 

If you go back to the 50's/60's/70's (I'm not sure which era is best), did people still fret over which cap to use or which wire to use or which (brand) of tube?

 

I grew up pretty much on the tail end of the tube era.  I recall the service guy coming out to fix the tv and putting a little tube in there and that is about it.  When I was looking at electronics, the 'new & improved' was the solid state and you could buy a used McIntosh for what seemed to be nothing.

 

I have this view of that era of someone simply grabbing a cap off the shelf to fix something.  Need a new 300B?  Go to the store and get what's on sale.  Need some speaker wire?  What is "speaker" wire?  Go get some of that lamp cord wire and all is well.

 

I wasn't there so if people were neurotic about things then like they can be now, I wasn't old enough to witness it.

 

So I ask, were people as neurotic then as they can be now?

 

Have a look here: http://www.hifilit.com/Mad/Mad.htm Somewhere in the Klipsch stuff, on the main link, PWK was complaining about the quality of recordings. How shocking.