We had a great time at the Quickie Building Class on Saturday at Bottlehead HQ. There were only two of us in attendance, so we were able to keep it pretty casual and unstructured, with PB and Doc on hand during the entire afternoon to answer questions and teach us all sorts of useful building techniques and concepts. I got a lesson from Doc on "mil spec" grounding, along with a story about a fighter jock friend of his who had one of his missiles malfunction during a mission due to a cold solder joint.
Anyway, we started at around 12:30pm and by 5:30 or so, we walked out of the lab with new Quickies all ready to go. We actually built prototypes of new version, which is the same circuit with a slightly simplified wiring layout and fewer parts. So part of our job was to keep an eye out for errors in the manual. I found a few minor things but, as with all Bottlehead kits, the manual was already quite excellent.
PB very kindly brought some special treats for us out of his personal stash. So our class-built Quickies ended up with upgraded coupling capacitors and teflon-insulated wire as well as beautiful pairs of gain-matched NOS Brimar tubes! Thanks PB!
Afterward, we retired to Doc's lair upstairs to hear our creations on the big Bottlehead demo rig. Doc cued up a couple of vinyl tracks from Ramsey Lewis' "Down to Earth", which sounded absolutely great through the Quickies. We also compared the Quickies to the BeePre prototype and while the difference was - ahem - obvious, the little Quickies were not at all embarrassed. It may be hard to believe, but I honestly think you'd have to spend at around $2k+ on a commercial preamp to equal the sound quality of the Quickie. Yes, it's that good.
I hope more of you will start to join in as these classes represent a unique opportunity to learn amplifier design and construction from the masters themselves. Where else can you go to learn about valve audio electronics in 2012? And besides that, it's just a whole lot of fun!
--Jim
