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Tube stereo sounds -smaller- after being on

Ok here is a weird one. I’ve been into tube audio for the last 20 years or so and I have one system I leave as is and one system I mess around with and change things out. For the most part, these days, I’m happy with both. Except I’ve been noticing something I thought I was imagining. Which is my experimental system starts out sounding great and after being on for a couple of hours sounds worse. Small soundstage, compressed highs and lows. Just over all enh. I have two turntables -

Gates and an EMT 930. The mixer is a great sounding one hand built in Austrailia called a Condesa Lucia. The amp is a Line Magnetics 2a3 amp LM 217. The cartridges are an EMT and a Denon 102. The tt preamps are by sun valley and auditorium 23. The one thing I can think of is the amp is a 220 version and goes through a power converter. Perhaps this is a sonic wrecker when it gets hot. Any other ideas? Thank you. 

yaluaka

Showing 1 response by zazouswing

zazouswing
140 posts
 

It’s obviously not the mixer of the sound is initially good with the mixer in the line up. I was eying that mixer a few years back - it’s top notch among rotary mixers.

I would set up a few experiments with the equipment running on 220 and the overheating transformers - then if the problem persists I’d look into tube swapping. If the mixer has a tape loop you may be able to connect the loop out to another input. After a few hours switch to the loop input to see if the problem persists. 

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