PrimaLuna comes to mind as a company that has combined the best of modern technology with the best of vacuum tube sound quality. Their autobias has taken the mystery out of maintenance and brought tube rolling to the market for those who would otherwise not want to deal with such things. At real world pricing their products punch way above their price point. Driving tubes gently helps keep the cost of long term ownership reasonable. Lots of reasons they’ve done so well in a short time. Perhaps others will take a queue.
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With a single ended tube amp it is easy to build your own. But to keep it linear you can't push a tube very hard. You need heavy duty transmitter tubes. There is a WAVAC SET that sold for $350,000 that you can build with under $2000 in retail parts. It runs 833A triodes at about 1000 Volts which will make these tubes last for many years. Hammond makes a transformer more than robust enough and more robust than any bigger name or vintage transformers and Lindahl makes an input transformer for the grid suitable for a 45 SET to drive the 833A. This gets you SET purity you can use for less sensitive speakers such as planar magnetic speakers which have a purity that is difficult to approach with cabinet speakers. |
Transformers are the key element for both SET and push pull. Even for OTL the power transformer is relevant. Likely the best commercial winders were in Japan in the late '90s, companies like HIrata Tango and Tamura. I think back then there was a focus on sound and quality rather than volume and profit margin. Likely there are currently some good boutique winders, and maybe Western Electric were good (never heard an amp with these). Useful to distinguish between collectable and listenable - not sure where the WE falls. I certainly do not equate 'high tech' with 'great sound'. Frequently the application of high tech results in additional complexity and worst sound. Hard to make the argument that the more you process the signal the better and more realistic it sounds.....
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@mulveling @sns Yes, I chose an AR SP-14 over the 9. I did not like the 9. The 14 had some superior sound advantages. The SP-10 was my favorite and the SP-8 my second favorite of the era. They had big, bold, full bodied sound (like a Fisher 200? preamp that I briefly owned). Comparable to a McIntosh MC30 full range. My neighbor has an AR LS-28. It sounded thin and blah until he installed 6H6/6N6 tubes for the 6H30s. Wow, fantastic improvement. I would own that pre-amp if I didn't have my own excellent pre-amps (multiple systems). As to great sounding, powerful modern tube amps that are still reasonably priced is the EAR 890. I just purchased another one inexpensively. Paravacini knew transformers and circuit design, regardless that they are not considered state of the art and used ordinary audio parts, no special cables, fuses, tubes or footers (I use them all on the 890 except the tubes remain the same). Zesto is copying his designs and I have not auditioned them to compare. That's flattery and could be a trend, using common tubes in non-ultralinear designs. I considered the VAC iq200 but the EAR is just better sounding and cheaper. |
@alexberger Thank you for your list. Matching the amp to the speaker is critical, similar to a cartridge to an arm. However, there are many choices of amps for most speakers. I also have an upgraded Dynaco ST70 in my living room system. It is not ultralinear any longer but voltage regulated using different taps on the transformer as well as the standard upgrades to power cap (huge), ss rectifier (kept the tube for slow turn on) RCA plugs and speaker terminals, etc), . It has superb bass and is extremely musical sounding lacking only the resolution of the EAR 890 I use in the main system. Those 35 watts work great on a Legacy Signature III with 6-10" woofers. It’s a little underpowered for my Focus with 6-12" woofers and much lower bass impedance. |
Really great thread with lots of thoughtful responses. Thanks! To me, the answer becomes obvious when you substitute “motorcycles” or “cars” for tube amps. Clearly the best are being made today. But it doesn’t mean that all cars today are “better” than all cars made in 1960. It would also be logical to suggest the best amps from 1960 (and all amps were tube then) will outperform many of the tube amps made today. This is especially apparent when based on subjective levels of performance or aesthetics. I’m interested also in the comparison to the recording side. Are all recordings made today better than all recordings made in 1960? No, but the best recordings are being made today. |
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@rogerh113 Excellent power transformers can be made by a good number of companies here in the US. If you take an OTL and run the ZERO autoformer on it, you wind up (if you see what I did there) with the possibility of an amplifier with much greater bandwidth than any conventional tube amp. This is because the ZERO has such low turns ratio and extremely low distributed capacitance that its bandwidth is very wide- about 2Hz to 1 MHz- wider than any tube amp made. Usually the bandwidth limitation is in the output transformer. |
@antigrunge2 The result depends largely on the interface of the amp to the load. In our case, it works really well if the load is lower than the amp is comfortable with. There are tradeoffs if part of the load (like the mids and high) are easy to drive while the woofer isn't. However sometimes in that case, if the speaker can be bi-wired, you can run the ZERO just on the woofer to correct the impedance and run direct on the mids and highs. If the amp uses feedback, as in the case of the Graaf (IIRC) then its a good idea to have the feedback at the output of the transformer, which would take some work... So its not a cure-all solution, but it is one that can be very effective if the stars align. |