Gainclone Amps

[pauln]

The moon is full tonight.

[Marvel]

The moon is full tonight.

The m00n is often full of himself.

Jeff,

One of the priests at my church is French. The sermons always sound

like I am listening to Inspector Clouseau. Except the sermons make more

sense.[]

Bruce

[Duke Spinner]

too bad i didn't see this untill today .......[A]

there's tears runnin' down my cheeks...[]

[JBryan]

If anyone's still listening or interested... I am using a 30 watt Gainclone amp to drive each Khorn Bass bin and I like what I hear. To be honest, I don't think the GC amp is an "End-All, Be-All" amp but it is very detailed, fast and it has a seemingly endless bottom end. Another benefit is that the GC amps tend to be extremely quiet and they also run very efficient - using about the same power as a flashlight. I keep them on all the time so the power supply caps are primed and ready. I should also say that having heard a few GC and TP amps, I'm convinced that the power supply needs to be over-built with excess capacitance to get the most out of the amps.

I recently picked up an amp built around a pair of Hypex UcD180 modules. They put out 100+ watts into 8 ohms and I'm anxious to try the extra watts with the bass bins.

I don't care for GC or Tripath amps on the top-end as they sound a bit sterile for my taste. For that, I use a variety of amps - usually 45 SET and Transcendent SEOTLs both of which have more detail and transparency than the digital-based amps and mesh well with them in my setup.

I've tried several amps on the bass bins - both tube and SS and found the GCs to be the best alternative for my purposes. But then, its all about compromises - isn't it?

Have fun, Bryan

[Daddy Dee]

Bryan,

Sounds like a very good setup.

I'd be interested to hear more about your crossover setup.

Also, does your setup work in such a way that you can simply adjust the gain from the preamp volume control?

[JBryan]

DD,

Its good to hear from you!

First, I'm only using the Khorn bass bin in a 2-way setup so this may be of no interest to you at all.

I'm still playing with the xover and am looking at using an active xover ahead of all the amps. For the time being, I'm using a simple 2nd order xover between the top-end and bass bin. I'm using a variable resistor to tweak the frequency xover since the signal is coming from whichever SET amp I have hooked up and it does move around a bit as a result.

I don't have any EQ equipment so I have to set things using a test CD and SPL meter but I fiqure when the range is a flat as it can get, I'm pretty close to the setting I want.

I should take a picture since I've finished the cabinets and mounted the new horns. It'd certainly offer you a better explanation than I can.

Thanks again, Bryan

[JBryan]

To be accurate, the xover I'm referring to is a simple low-pass filter that crosses over between 140 & 200 Hz. My top-end horn runs open -no filter and the horn has a natural cut-off at 160Hz.

The LP filter is comprised of a cap and a variable resistor which allows me to play with the cut-off when I switch amps. As opposed to the 45 monos (2W/ch), I've noticed that when I use the SEOTL monos (4W/ch), the bass seems very-well damped and I have to adjust to a lower cut-off frequency in order to keep response curve flat. With the 45 amps, I have a higher cut-off but it may all be attributable to room resonances as I'm mainly trying to flatten out a 100Hz hump.

I hope this offers a better explanation.

Have fun, Bryan

[Daddy Dee]

Thanks Bryan.