Bret Ludwig wrote:

west wrote:


Professor, are you using your custom built speakers or a commercial type
with you SE amp? Why is there so little mention at your web site about your
speakers? BTW, John: Nice article you wrote in recent issue of AudioXpress.
Try not to totally abandon the articles. Life is too short. Wow, little ole
me between the Twin Towers of tubes!
west

It was an okay article but most people want to put some money into a
serious project and not piddle around with cheap transformers if they
are going to spend the time to build one. Best grade OPT's are the way
to go.

JS likes to perpetuate the idea that anyone who wants to build a tube amp needn't

spend much money on OPTs, and that tube sound is quite a cheap hobby.

This probably appeals to and panders to the hundreds of DIYers of 50yrs old
who dare not spend much more than peanuts on their hobby, lest
they feel they are spending too much, just like a kid of 16 thinking he
mustn't spend too much on the new bicycle rims for the bike he's building, since
hobbies must be cheap,
and affordable, especially if the wife thinks hubbie's soldering efforts are
some crazy thing, and she controls the purse strings.
Meanwhile, although the latter day big kid agonisers over the costs
of OPTs, and whether the extra $1 coupling cap is necessary,
he pays $1,000 per mth on medical insurance, and goodness knows what
on other household expenses.....

For as long as i can remember, kits for all sorts of things in magazines
were about making something that performed barely well enough and for
a fraction of the price of something in a shop.
I have built some kits for frequency measurement, ( impossible with tubes )
and some distortion measurement gear, also based on chips.
But the use of such kits was always lacking in any real ability;
kits are mostly glorified toys, so I then set out to seriously study the details
and
design and build my own distortion testing gear, milivolt meters
with BW from a useful 2Hz to 2Mhz at high Z, and so on.


I applaud JH for devoting his time to those he caters for.
He helps keep good men from going bad in a pub, and it generally fosters
interest in tubecraft.

They will mostly never buy the Real Mcoy item that has correct weight OPTs and
has been designed to a standard, not down to a price, and after wrestling with
getting their amp going, most will turn to some other interest later.....

Maybe 2% of the ppl that take up tubecraft as a result of the lead John has given
them will
go on to become a little more fanatic about it all and begin to think seriously
for themselves
about their audio constructions, guided by what they hear, and see on a CRO.


Patrick Turner.