New Stereomour

[mpeg2]

Finished this up this morn. Voltage checks were initially a bit wonky (but noticed that one tube was cold and the other hot - swapped them & everything was fine - maybe the tube wasn't plugged in adequately initially). I'm driving a pair of Klipsch Cornwalls (from about 25 years ago) - sounds very nice.

I made a base from a nice piece of wood that I found at a local lumber yard (can't quite recall the type) & turned a few knobs on the lathe.

Pics below (I hope).

Rich

[azrockitman]

Nice job and beautiful woodworking!   I notice...it appears you have black fiber or black lock washers beneath your Hum balance potentiometers.   Did you buy those somewhere?  Or did yours come with the black?  Mine are white and stand out sorely since I powedercoated my face plate black....

nice job again

[mpeg2]

Thanks...

I had to go over and look at the amp to see what those washers were. They're the lockwashers that came with the pots - they were black. I was debating about using them or substituting some brass colored washers from other pots (since I was afraid the teeth would show from above if they weren't centered). Turned out OK & I'm glad I used them.

    Rich

[azrockitman]

thanks.  enjoy!

[Grainger49]

Rich,

Very nice wood.  And nice knobs (don't tell my wife I said that!). 

I wouldn't have noticed the black washers under the hum pots unless it had been mentioned. 

How are you enjoying the amp?

[mpeg2]

Grainger: Thanks. I didn't notice the washers either until the question came up & then I had to go look. I built the base while waiting for the kit to be shipped - took about a weekend. The knobs were kind of fun - actually pretty simple to turn on a lathe (took about 1/2 hour each). The only thing that was a pain was threading the hole for the setscrew, but using some furniture wax on the setscrew made it workable.

I've only listed for an hour so far - but plan to do more listening tonight when it cools off (our house AC won't be working for another week). What I've heard so far was very nice - I'm glad I went this route.

   Rich

[mpeg2]

A few more hours listening (with a fan on me, not the amp) and I'm liking this amp more and more. Amazing clarity to the sound that I'm not sure I've heard before...

Great design.

   Rich

[Mike B]

Yeah, it's pretty cool, eh?

I started with push-pull pentodes.  They were better than solid state.

Then I went to class A pentodes.  They were better than push-pull.

Now I have class A triodes with zero feedback.  They are the best yet.

Yup, simply amazing.  Back to the past.

[mpeg2]

I didn't follow quite the same path for audio, I stayed with solid state until a few years ago, when I built a Darling amp (fairly simple, SE circuit at a bit less than 1W). Worked nice & I was mostly OK until I built the Crack headphone amp - which got me thinking of improving my main system at home.

Most of my tube amp experience is with guitar amps, where I followed the opposite path to what you describe in your note - starting off with simple single ended amps & ending up preferring push/pull. Of course, there's a big difference - for guitar amps, the amp is part of the overall sound and the distortions are desirable. I liked the push/pull because of the added complexity to the sound (and my favorite is still the old Fender 5E3 (tweed deluxe) circuit.

  Rich

[thaddeussmith]

how loud do your cornwalls get? size of room and listening distance?

[mpeg2]

Plenty loud - I haven't gone to full volume yet. Room is about 16x18, listening about 9-10 feet away.

   Rich