Once you go 300b it’s hard to go back?

I've recently been listening to my humble 300b stereo amp and I just wanted to say I think I'm in love. My Quad 909/ESL 2805 setup is pretty nice, but this little 300B amp into my ~94dB efficient JBL monitors is very engaging. 

Markus

Call it what you want but how can anyone argue with the final result when a woman sits down and says the music sounds much more natural,then spends more free time actually listening instead of puttering around with music in the background?
 

I don't get any argument from my GF on the fact that the stereo is in the living room, how large the speakers are, their placement, or anything. The sound won her over.

No 300bs FWIW, but it **is** all triode, which is far more important than *which* triode.

Hi Freediver,
I agree with you. I was just for fun playing the role of the typical measurement/objectivist responder.
Charles 

Call it what you want but how can anyone argue with the final result when a woman sits down and says the music sounds much more natural,then spends more free time actually listening instead of puttering around with music in the background?
 

"Sand is for beaches, not stereo amps!"
You realize the retort is that tube amp owners just love tube distortion.😊
Two different worlds.
Charles

It's not just 300B driven amps,it's TUBES!!!I just recently needed a new amp and was within a whisker of going MacIntosh SS because I couldn't find a tube amp that ticked all my needs,then I stumbled across a brand new to the market Quad AV-One and am basking in all tube glory again!
 I haven't tried a SET 300B amp yet but have had KT-88,EL-34,6G6 and now EL-84 driven amps and with the right speakers to my ears the EL-84's offer the best balance of bass control,extended treble and GLORIOUS midrange...Sand is for beaches,not stereo amps!

At home I use an AN (UK) Meishu Silver with WE 300b into Loth-X Troubadour 104 db speakers. Recently I was given an old Audio Note Japan Ongaku 211 (GE tubes) on long term loan which now sits side by side with the Meishu. I am in the process of making comparisons (very little rapid A/B switching, more long time listening then switch..this is the best way to see differences IMO) but it is quite interesting to be able to compare one make with two different SET arrangements. Interestingly, the first few weeks of testing show a lot less difference than I was expecting. The AN UK Meishu has a surprising amount of scale and better mids than the Ongaku, but the 211 additional output helps even out the performance throughout the frequency range. Given the price difference, the Meishu seems to be ridiculously good. We have an AN Tomei 211 (Elrog tubes) in our mastering studio which we use as a daily monitoring workhorse. It is fantastic, and being in an acoustically neutral environment where we are not thinking audiophile, but rather working, it provides a reasonable "control" reference. In conclusion (so far), a well executed 300b married with the right speakers will not be better, but can hold its own against the best 211 set up. Also note that if you are into tube rolling, one gets more tonal differences between 300B tubes than 211 tubes. So perhaps these WE 300B early reissues might be one of the main reasons the Meishu is up there?

Hi Thom,

Your comments on driver tubes and circuitry is spot on. Once you chose a particular DHT tube, separates SET amps is really the driver circuitry. Followed by the OPTs. Or do like I did, which is to ditch the OPTs altogether OTL. My Berning 300B SET OTL (new "Siegfried") is my current fave SET amp and looks like it will remain for a long time.

Lynn is a brilliant theoretician and I feel fortunate to live in the same town - bouncing ideas back and forth with him. Having his Karnas in my house for those three months was revelatory.

Check out his essay "Illusion Engines". Some of it (written in the mid-90’s) is a bit dated, but the concepts are still viable (to me): http://www.nutshellhifi.com/library/illusion-engines.html.  He's primarily a "speaker guy" (having designed first for Audionics in the '70's), but he digs into all areas of audio with passion.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier Design

@charles1dad  understood and agreed on power supplies I am sure i
will listen to a 300B amp again someday!

@thom_mackris interesting looking amps thanks for the link. On the subject of the amps being push pull I am a fan i’ve heard and loved 45 and 2a3 pp amps.

Hi @jond,

Until I lived with Lynn Olson’s personal Karna amplifiers (http://www.nutshellhifi.com/triode2.html) while he was getting settled into his new house here in Colorado in 2005, much of this lush vs. quick 300B stereotype was theory. Yes, I’d heard 300B amps that were more or less incisive, but they still fell within a range that I’d refer to as a "normal" characterization of a 300B.

The material on Lynn's page is a bit dated, as the Ariel speakers are about to receive an upgrade to a horn system he's been designing over the past few years, but the basic amplifier design principles hold true to this day.

Of course, Lynn’s amplifiers are push-pull 300Bs (so this isn’t an apples to apples comparison with anything else), but he used all of the power supply tricks I’m using, and of equal importance is that his driver tube is a 45 (Sakuma/direct heating again - output tube driving output tube).

The Karnas' sound more like powerful single ended amps than push-pull, which plays into my theory that the better various architectures are designed and implemented, the more convergence there is between them.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier Design

While I don't have experience with that model, I haven't heard a Line Magnetic amp that I didn't adore. I've even run them on dynaudios with great results - makes no sense on paper but the music is beautiful

Hi jond,
Yep, overall implementation and appropriate attention paid to the power supply and output transformers are simply unavoidable  vital decision points. 300b amplifiers can range from lush,slow and very colored to outstanding clarity, transparency and naturalness. Depends on the builder and quality of execution.
Charles

@thom_mackris Everything you wrote makes perfect sense thank you. I should have also been wary of making a blanket statement about tube type. I am sure there are great amps out there using the 300B tube and probably a few mediocre amps using 2A3s or 45s. I know the importance of a good power supply but hadn't thought of driver tubes in quite that context very interesting!

Hi Lewinskih01,
I believe that either of these 2 choices you mentioned would be wonderful and make you very happy. Another option is Aric Audio, they can built you a very fine single chassis SET amplifier using whatever output tube you prefer. Mac48025 who posted earlier has 2 amplifiers built by Aric and he says the sound quality, customer service and built quality are first rate. I definitely trust his assessment having personally meeting him.
You have terrific choices. DHT SET are truly excellent with the proper speaker. Best of luck to you. 
Charles

Lewinshih01: As I mentioned, I have owned both Yamamoto A-08 and DejaVu 45/2A3 SETs. I liked them both - a lot. Neither was very expensive, and both had good resale value. (I just needed a little more power, plus my 300b SET was custom made to work with a CDP/pre-amp by the same designer.)

djdonis: I wish I had your engineering and musical skills. 

Taking advantage of the SET-knowledgeable folks around this thread: I'm looking into 45 or 2A3 stereo amps. Short list being Yamamoto and Triode Lab. Assuming the speaker is efficient enough and high impedance enough to not be a limitation, what do you think of these amps? Other competing such amp I should consider? 

No integrates nor monoblocks, as these will go into a fully active system driving mids/treble, while solid state will drive the bottom end.

Had tetrode Mac amps, but sold them months later because they were two dimensional and unable to get close to the 300Bs.

Find a good dealer and do a trial with a Lyngdorf 2170. It isn’t a class A, B or D. It’s it’s own class. As close to a wire with gain as you will experience. But if you like tube distortion, don’t bother. You won’t hear it from the Lyngdorf. Feed it with clean digital, and you’ll hear what was recorded without coloration. Feed it from analog, and you’ll hear what your front end feeds it. Period. Again, if you like the distortion from a single digit watt SET push into distortion, you will not like the Lyngdorf. It will not distort or color anything fed to it. I've auditioned it against low power tube amps and tube pre-powers. It adds none of the coloration those amps add. It was equivalent to taking Windex to a dirty piece of glass to me in comparison. And the lack of dynamics in comparison to a low wattage tube amp was startling. I can't get a grip on what others love of the one watt tube sound. But that's just me, I guess. 

Folks must realize most class 'D' amps are single ended amps as the analog signal is 'formed' across an inductor/capacitor pair just like a triode plate/cathode. All the gobbly-gook ahead of the passive pair is ultrasonic basically. No wonder class D sounds good if well implemented.

But here's the truth, if ya luv the glow and the sound, just stay in nirvana baby! Happiness is happiness!

If you feel the itch to wander well than maybe it's time to listen on man. But don't sweat it dude! It's all GOOD!

Hi Jond,

Personally for my taste if I ever went the SET route again, it's been some years, I would go for either the 2A3 or 45 tube over the 300B. Both to me are a touch more incisive and transparent though also lower power.

I used to be of the same opinion.  The thing about directly heated triodes is that you're basically hearing the driver tube, and the higher the power rating of the output tube, the more difficult it is to drive.  This is one reason for there being so many mediocre sounding 845 and GM70 amps.

The whole "Direct Heating" (Sakuma) movement in Japan was based on paying attention to the driver circuit, and they drove their high power triodes with output tubes ... sometimes, even pentodes!

The first prototype of our NiWatt amplifier had that typical lush but slow 300B sound.  As we paid more and more attention to the power supplies (4 of them per channel) in order to free up the driver circuit from the output tube's demands, the amp began to take on a "45 on steroids" characteristic - quick, delicate, articulate while harmonically rich but with power to spare.

Back in the'90's, this lush presentation worked for a lot of us because many high efficiency speaker systems could be a bit on the "rude" sounding side.  Now that we're seeing more and more refined high efficiency speaker systems, we don't "need" these colorations to serve as a tone control.  Some may like it, and that's ok too ;-)

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier Design

I’ve had several 2a3 and 300b amps, went through entire low power amp - high sensitivity speaker journey. Then I started building digital amps, tpa3116, IRS2092, now tpa3255 - never looked back. Most of my stereo equipment is hand built.
I’m a professional musician - violinist, making my living playing music, also have EE degree...

@gsm18439 cool I live near Vu too and have a preamp and pushpull amp both designed by Pavel.  EL34 but I've borrowed his pushpull 45 amp before and loved it.

In my case my Leben CS-300 bettered SAC 300B PP and Yamamoto 2A3 amp. Also I prefer it over First Watt F5 clones power amps I already own.

Gary,
I understand.  I could live happily with the First Watt S.I.T amplifier I had on loan, but still happier with the current 300b SET.
Charles 

Charles

The Bakoon is different from the AA300b. Each has strengths. I could be happy with either. But not ready to swap. 

After some solid state and push-pull tube amplifiers, I recently got into the SET world. Bought a Line Magnetic 219ia using 300B as drivers and the 845 as power tubes.
This is by far the best sounding amplifier I ever had and one of the best I've ever heard. So natural and efortlessly, the music just flows!
I'm going to try some more amplifiers, but I guess it will be hard to beat this one in my setup.

Hi Gary,
Is the Bakoon impressive enough to replace your 300b SET amplifier? I’ve read positive comments regarding the Bakoon.
Charles

jond: It was an SET that could use either 45 or 2A3 tubes. I have been fortunate to live near Vu's shop and have heard several of his amplifiers, but the only one that I have owned was a 45/2A3 SET.

One group of amplifiers that is not often mentioned is the SE, PE, and PP amplifiers made by Gary Dewes of Border Patrol. All use 300b tubes.

Finally, since Charles re-introduced solid state amplifiers into the discussion, I recently heard a Bakoon amplifier with my Def 4s. Definitely worth consideration.

Hi guf ,
Well you sure had a very fine reference point in the First Watt S.I.T.2. I had the Nelson Pass D.I.Y. push pull version of the S.I.T. 2 designed by him. 40 watt pure class A and one of the finest sounding solid state amplifiers I've heard. He knows his stuff 😊. I was very impressed with it in my system.

In direct comparison with my 300b mono block SET I did prefer the latter. 
1  More realism overall
2  Even better tonality and harmonic overtone presentation.  The First Watt was just a bit drier but still very good. 
3 More 3 dimensional and reach out and touch tactile.
4  More of an emotional connection with the music.

300b done right is musically hard to beat. I will admit that the exceptional First Watt came admirably  close. 
Charles 

@gsm18439 Just curious was your Deja Vu 2A3 amp SET or pushpull? I've heard the pushpull 45 and 2A3's from them but not an SET. Great amps I have a stereo pushpull EL34 amp from Deja Vu that I love.

noromance and wolf_garcia. . .  easier said than done.

My Inspire Fire Bottle HO (Dennis Had) works with lots of different tubes and that's something I like, and something I don't like is long interconnects that aren't balanced. Also note that long speaker wire through the cellar has advantages…hang aging meat or sausages from them (this also damps the cable resonances), towels from the hot tub, lights so you can see how the neighbor you have tied up down there is doing…many benefits.

@gsm18439 Move your amps to the speakers and use long IC runs instead.

I started my SET journey with 45s, then 2A3s, and finally 300b tubes. The 45 and 2A3 SETs (Yamamoto or DejaVu) just did not have enough oomph regardless of the tube manufacturers. (Caveat: I have very long speaker wire runs between my amplifier and my Zu Def4s - from one side of the room down through the cellar to the other side of the room.) I bought a custom AncientAudio 300b SET to match my CDP and use Takastuki 300b tubes after trying several other versions including Shuguang BT, Sophia Royal Princess, etc. I have not tried WEs or KR or EML. I have

300B's are very musical and presents the "SET" sound wonderfully. I've always had a 300B in my system and it's still my main amp even though I've gone through the First Watt F2J and SIT2 amps and other SET like 2A3, 421A and 71A. I've certainly spent more on tubes and currently like the 1930-40's WE300B the best although I'm mostly using the 1950's WE300B, just to preserve the previous engraved late 1930's. But I've tried Elrog, EML, Sophia Princess and the whole gamut of TJ, ValveArt, Electro Harmonix, Sovtek, Svetlana etc inclduing reissued WE300B and also Takatsuki 300B.
I'm currently using Feastrex D9a Type 1 field coils which are rated 103dB. System sounds wonderful.

I don't see myself straying from my Aric Audio SET 300B. After many years riding on the amp carousel ive found MY amp. I'm using Sophia Royal Princess tubes and am enjoying a beautifully realistic musical sound. I'm not saying SET amps are the best amps.....just the best for my personal tastes and system. 

I haven’t strayed too far beyond my el34 based amps the past few years until recently purchasing an Allnic t1500. The sound is unlike anything I have owned..., more dimensional, better tone and surprisingly enough, better bass. At times though the 300b does get a bit glassy ( golden lion perhaps) 

Yeah thats next for sure. I'm not even pushing 1 watt in my near field  set up. 

Personally for my taste if I ever went the SET route again, it's been some years, I would go for either the 2A3 or 45 tube over the 300B. Both to me are a touch more incisive and transparent though also lower power.

I have an SET 300B that I don't use very often, for HT and the majority of my two channel listening, I use kit built Class D Audio amps which sound quite good. Last night, I decided it was time to fire up the SET amp, along with the 12AU7 Grounded Grid (with some upgrades in output caps and tubes), and was stunned once again just how musical it all sounded.

I also have more invested in tubes than the actual amp cost, but the upgraded caps and resistors made the cost of the EML 300B XLS worth every cent spent on them.

My very modest Assemblage SET 300B will stay with me 'til I am no more.