If you like to tinker its great. It's the equivalent of home cooking. I have only messed with tubes for a short period and it is amazing to me how few components are needed for a circuit and most of the designs have been around forever. Audioexpress has an "Audio Classroom series" online with all the articles by Crowhurst and Marshall that were published in the mid 50s in Audiocraft Magazine and they are still great.
Just completed (the solder is still hot) a nice system for my niece who is off at college. She saved 1k to spend on music and asked me what to buy. (She came to me because she knows I'm a soft touch.) I matched it and made the following for around 2k from kits: 1) Adire Audio's HE10.1 speaker, 2)the "Billie" 300b SET amp and "Basie" pre amp from diyhifi supply. This is all really simple kit stuff. Added a Heart 4000 cd player, the opamp is taken out and 6922 triodes (tubes) are used for output stage. It's a modification of a Marantz and is nice for a fairly cheap cd player. Could have saved some $ on the pre.
She listens to a lot of folk/jazz and for this music it's a nice musical system for about 2k. In addition, the amp is very tweakable with lots of modifications documented at Audioasylum. Does not sound like a beginner's set-up at all, easy to make, and I think I would recommend it to anybody as a first project.
Might upgrade it with something based on a Lowther for her graduation. That would make it a keeper I think.
After a few years of tweaking a 2 1/2 way speaker system (based on Northcreek design), which I still realy like, I am looking more at single drivers. It is amazing what a very simple SET circuit can do with a single driver for certain kinds of music. They flip out a little with full orchestral music but for small jazz and folk groups or classical quartets it is just wonderful... at least to my ears.
I have an idea to make a system with as few components as possible. Single ended... Single driver etc...If anybody has any info on this kind of thing I would like to hear about it.
Cheers, I remain
Just completed (the solder is still hot) a nice system for my niece who is off at college. She saved 1k to spend on music and asked me what to buy. (She came to me because she knows I'm a soft touch.) I matched it and made the following for around 2k from kits: 1) Adire Audio's HE10.1 speaker, 2)the "Billie" 300b SET amp and "Basie" pre amp from diyhifi supply. This is all really simple kit stuff. Added a Heart 4000 cd player, the opamp is taken out and 6922 triodes (tubes) are used for output stage. It's a modification of a Marantz and is nice for a fairly cheap cd player. Could have saved some $ on the pre.
She listens to a lot of folk/jazz and for this music it's a nice musical system for about 2k. In addition, the amp is very tweakable with lots of modifications documented at Audioasylum. Does not sound like a beginner's set-up at all, easy to make, and I think I would recommend it to anybody as a first project.
Might upgrade it with something based on a Lowther for her graduation. That would make it a keeper I think.
After a few years of tweaking a 2 1/2 way speaker system (based on Northcreek design), which I still realy like, I am looking more at single drivers. It is amazing what a very simple SET circuit can do with a single driver for certain kinds of music. They flip out a little with full orchestral music but for small jazz and folk groups or classical quartets it is just wonderful... at least to my ears.
I have an idea to make a system with as few components as possible. Single ended... Single driver etc...If anybody has any info on this kind of thing I would like to hear about it.
Cheers, I remain