Great amp service by Paul Birkeland

While looking for info on 845 amps, Dan from Bottlehead said I should contact Paul Birkeland, Bottlehead's equipment designer. After speaking with him, I decided to take  my old Assemblge SET 300B amp to him for measurements, thinking the amp might benefit from some nice Sowter transformers. After performing the measurements, taking a good look at the transformers, he declared they were Magnaquest transformers, and they are as good as they come.

During this process, he found one Black Gate cap going bad, and the one from the other channel was on its way too, so he replaced them with Nichicon caps. He then set the filament voltage for my EML XLS 300B tubes, which he got within 0.1% of the ideal voltage . He then played music on a pair of 810 mono-blocks he's been building, and I was very surprised, through the Bottlehead speakers he had a hand in designing, the music was as close to live as I've ever heard anywhere.

To top it all off, I asked him what I owed him, he said "just give me twenty bucks and we're good". This after 2 1/2 hours or so of work. I gave him $120 and still felt like it wasn't enough. Oh, and the amp sounds quite a bit better, too, and will get better after the caps settle in.

You don't find that kind of service hardly anywhere anymore. I like to give credit where credit is due, so here we are.

First class all the way around.

Regards,
Dan