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Joule Electra VZN100 Thoughts

Thought I'd post some observations since trading for these amps I really wasn't looking for. That was about 9 months ago. I still have misgivings about them. I have a 2.5 year old who loves music and dancing and don't want to go through the trouble of making them safe. Those 12 6C33 tubes are intimidating - cool but worrisome. They take up a lot of room and they can really heat a room in the summer months. Great now that it's cold, we get a heated room. Customer service was not to be. They hum a bit too.

Here's lies the problem. In all the amps I've ever owned, auditioned, listened too, at the many audio shows I've attended, getogethers too, nothing I've heard so far has sounded better, that possessed the magic, that got me closer to real music than these tubed monoblock OTL's. I know it is system dependent, but the shear beauty and openness of these amps is nothing short of amazing. I've owned Pass, Halcro, Classe, and so many others. I had the Decware Torii when these amps found my living room. Great sounding amps the Torii's, nothing really to complain about, except when I reluctantly (was talked into it really) plugged these amps into my system it was one of those OMG moments.

I tweaked them a bit over the months, better power cords and connectors, and nearly made one unusable because I miss-wired a connector. That's when I discovered there was no support and no available documentation. I was on my own. It ended well, just a bad connection.

I noted during my cable upgrade that there were some bulging capacitors. These amps I guess are around 10 years old. Maybe it's time to replace the caps? That would be quite a rebuild.

These amps are controlled by a Allnic L3000 preamp, fed from a NAD M51 DAC which gets music from a very well filtered server. Super V speakers make it all happen.

So goes my story of these OTL's. Thought I'd share and wonder if anyone who has spent time with these amps, had found something even better?
desalvo55

Showing 1 response by tubes108

tubes108
153 posts
 
I owned the larger VZN 160's for a number of years. I put lots of hours on them and there were no service issues. They were built like a battleship, solid and always reliable. Their build quality/reliability certainly put another OTL vendor who's amps I was familiar with to shame.

My VZN amps were very quiet. Wondering if the hum you mention is from a ground loop? Monoblocks are prone to amplifying hum caused by a ground loop. Have you explored this possibility? Also the support I received from Joule, whenever I had questions, was excellent.

Per someone's mention that (and I summarize) "another .... OTL vendor due to the heat generated..... the sockets should be replaced with the tube." Do note that is not applicable to the Joule-Electra amps nor I suspect to Lamm or BAT amps. There was another OTL vendor who marketed 6c33c based OTL amps some years ago which, to be subtle, were a mess. Their problems, such as the socket issue you refer & which those other amps suffered from, were not inherent in the use of the 6c33c tube; they were due to incompetently designed/poorly built amps.
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