lynn_olson
Responses from lynn_olson
| 300b lovers The very first one, the Amity, designed by yours truly, and built by Matt Kamna on an open breadboard-style chassis. Matt has since gone on to co-found Whammerdyne, a company that makes 2A3-based SET amplifiers, and exhibited in the Songer Audio r... | |
| 300b lovers Here’s a picture of Gary Dahl (seated) and Gary Pimm, shortly after Gary delivered the newly built Karna amps to our living room in Silverdale, Washington. 2003. Silverdale, 2003 Gary Pimm and Gary Dahl look under the chassis New Karna amps, 20... | |
| 300b lovers I second what Don just said. Isolation is the key. You can get away with a power transformer that has dual isolated secondaries, but this is a specialty item so don’t bother tracking it down. At the DIY level, just get another B+ transformer that ... | |
| 300b lovers Alex Berger, what you have sounds fine to me. The only refinement would be separate power supplies for the input+driver and the output section. And maybe a dedicated filament transformer for the 300B, whether AC or DC powered. | |
| 300b lovers Ralph, I sincerely invite you to build your own 300B amplifier. (The name of the thread is "300B lovers", after all.) You’re smart enough to bring Allen Wright’s topology back to life, and give it unique improvements of your own. Seriously, if any... | |
| 300b lovers There was a funny incident a few years back at the Dallas Audio Show. Back then, it was a little bitty thing, just a few exhibitors, but very much a home-town thing where everyone knew other. New to me, of course, as a former West Coast guy fairly... | |
| 300b lovers I should mention that Allen Wright liked a very different sound than I do; he liked fast, snappy, and what sounded to me like thin bass. I like a big, lush, spectacular, CinemaScope sound, the sound I heard in 70mm theaters when I was growing up. ... | |
| 300b lovers Ouch. None. As you might imagine, Allen was pretty shocked at the direct comparison, since his amp had much more powerful tubes than mine, which had generic Sovtek 300B’s, good and tough, but nowhere in the same league as Vaic’s finest. I mean, ... | |
| 300b lovers I should add I am completing a large-format 2-way speaker this summer, a collaboration with Thom Mackris of Galibier Designs, and an entirely separate project from Don Sachs and the Spatial Audio team. It’s a culmination of the extremely long "Bey... | |
| 300b lovers Most audiophiles do not realize how stupendously inefficient speakers are. By way of reference, 92 dB/watt/meter is about 1% efficient, or put another way, 100 watts of electricity is converted to one acoustic watt (which is plenty loud). So wher... | |
| 300b lovers Glad you’re enjoying it! As I might have mentioned earlier, in person or in this forum, I’ve been listening to the Karna/Blackbird amps for twenty years. It’s just what an amp sounds like to me. But the PAF is the first time I ever heard what my ... | |
| 300b lovers Let me tell the story about how misreading a graph almost bankrupted a company. This is a true story. Our chief engineer, a Tektronix veteran, designed a power amplifier called the Point Zero Three, or PZ3 (hey, I didn’t name it, OK?). A 100-wat... | |
| 300b lovers I’m always interested in boundary conditions ... what happens when the amp leaves its happy place and a surge of current or voltage is required. Does a circuit saturate and hit the wall? Does a transistor fail? Does it store charge and "stick" for... | |
| 300b lovers Quick recap: actually, vacuum tubes are far from saturation when set to normal bias points. Look at a 300B, or any other power tube. Normal quiescent bias is set between 60 and 85 mA, if Class A operation is desired. If Class AB is desired, 35 to ... | |
| 300b lovers From my perspective as an amp designer (not as a consumer or reviewer), the Sweet Spot in tube amps is from 3 watts (Class A SET) to 60 watts (Class AB PP pentode). These are all simple circuits with an emphasis on sound quality and reliability. ... |