Ol' Tex

Frank Mufich is an audio electronics magician. He works full time on restoring audio equipment out of his house. Audiophile. Electronics wizard. McKinney, Texas. http://www.mufichaudio.com

Hey jimjimbo, thanks for the heads up. Just the kind of information I'm looking for. I looked at the ampsandsound webpage and will definetly contact Justin to see what's what.

Tasdom and uwv80, Thanks for the response ... I'll definetly head over to Talkin' Tubes and audiokarma.org to start exploring. I'm expecting this to be a very enlightening journey!

I'm new to the Klipsch Community, so please bare with the new guy. After reading Taz's question, I thought I'd share my experience with a Sansui 9090DB driving my 1974 Cornwalls. I've owned my Sansui for a very long time (but not since new), and I recently had it restored ($600). My decsion to restore was because I had just purchased the Cornwalls (which are in terrific, near mint condition) The guy who worked on the Sansui shared with me that these receivers rarely come on the market because once someone gets one, they hardly ever let it go (unless they inherit one or find one in a garage sale and they don't know what they have). It is a truely fine piece of 1970's solid state electronics. After the restoration, I hooked the receiver up to my Cornwalls and I was very excited to start building my new (vintage) system. However, the Cornwalls are so damn efficient that I think the Sansui has too much power, and the sound is not quite as amazing as when I auditioned the Klipsch's (I'll come back to this in a second). But, back to Taz's initial question - the 9090DB is definetly more valuable than the 9090, and I would highly recommend restoring the DB. But to be honest, I don't use the Dolby component very often, so my recommendation is simply a biased opinion based on resale value. However, I wouldn't recommend that you sell the 9090DB because you probably can't get anything quite as good for the same money. One final point, however. After I hooked up the Sansui to my Cornwalls, the right channel would occassionally cut out. Man, was I frustrated - an expensive restoration and I was having a channel cut out. After flip floping the speakers, hooking them up to the B and C speaker outputs, and various other attempts, it turned out that it was the Dolby selection switch causing the problem. After exercising the rotating switch for a few minutes, both channels played perfectly - probably a dirty pit had formed over the years and exercising the knob allowed sufficient contact. None-the-less, I'll probably take the beast back to the restorer and have him work on/clean the Dolby components. So, in what I almost always consider a valuable approach, that is that simpler is better, if you decide to restore the 9090 as opposed to the 9090DB, you won't have the Dolby selection switch that could cause you the same problem I experienced. Man are life decisions hard. Yes, the DB is more valuable. Yes, it is one more place for problems. If you wish, I can send you a coin to help you make your decision. Now, the reason I came to this forum to begin with - does anyone have recommendations of a tube amplifier that works well (beautifully) with 1970's era Cornwalls. When I auditioned the Cornwalls, they were driven by a tube amp, but I can't remember the brand or the power. At the time of audition, I did not care about the amp because I was absolutely convinced that my Sansui 9090DB would be great with the Cornwalls. Now, I'm thinking a tube amp would be better because the audition made me love the Cornwalls. I was blown away. Any thoughts? Or if this line of discussion (tube amps and Cornwalls) is tired and old and took place long ago, could someone point me to the correct discussion? Or is there a different on-going forum that would be a better place to pose my question? Ol' Tex