Kevin you keep bringing up the Cary AE-3DJH. Since when was it ever a standard-bearer?
That review was the wrong preamp. The AE-3MKII was OK, but not nearly as good as the AE-3 DJH, which stood for Dennis J Had because he felt it was his best design. And at $1500. I never said it was a standard bearer. It’s an example of how simple it is to make a decent tube preamp cheap. Some would put it in a big empty box with a nice faceplate and charge $5k for it.
This comment about an amp “regulating AC to DC” is like…I don’t agree, respectfully. Tube amps also handle small signals. But that’s when it gets complex. Because of the power needs of the tubes, you need a massive power transformer unlike a preamp, then you need good regulation, which is easier on a preamp, then the driver section to drive the grids of the power tubes, then the biggest key: Output transformers. Expensive, and you need two of them. No matter what else you do, if you don’t have great output transformers, it all means nothing. Preamps don’t use them except for a small number of transformer coupled preamps like BAT’s top models.
PL has taken traditional but dated basic circuit designs, added some user-friendly features, built them to tank-like standards, and at great prices
This is true, but it’s about SOUND not just being user-friendly.
Adaptive AutoBias is ADAPTIVE. There have been auto bias circuits before. Even from Golden Tube Audio. AAB is about sound quality when tubes have many hours on them, or when they are pushed to their limit and experience pinch-off. It also allows the amp to run in Triode or Ultra-linear at the push of a button on the remote. And it’s how you can flip a switch to fine-tune performance between smaller dissipation tubes like EL34/KT66 and larger dissipation tubes like KT88/KT120/KT150. And finally, it protects the amp instantly in the event of a tube short, which would have helped the guy that started this thread, and would have told him which tube was the culprit and eliminate drama.
It was engineered by the Chief Designer for Goldmund in Switzerland, who was credited with penning some of their most iconic products.
A REAL engineer. Who also designed the output transformers and created other PrimaLuna designs you won’t find elsewhere like the AC Offset Killer to help make the power transformer dead quiet, the circuit on each input that provides a solid input impedance to source components, a proprietary cross coupled feedback on the power amps to add control without the negative feedback nasties, power transformer and output transformer protection in case of customer mistakes, and also created the Tjoebclock vacuum tube to address jitter in PrimaLuna CD players and the upcoming DAC. All performance. All exclusive to PrimaLuna.
As to “dated basic circuit designs”, there are no new designs. In preamps or amps. Most every push-pull amp uses a twist of Ultra-linear (ARC has their version) or Pentode (Mac and Quad have their versions). Ultra-linear was invented in 1938 and made famous in the 50’s. Not a lot has changed.
There is a booklet written about this by Scott Frankland for Sonic Frontiers many years ago that is FABULOUS. Download it here
http://ken-gilbert.com/images/pdf/taste_of_tubes.pdf