New vs Vintage
On Sun, 27 Mar 2011 07:37:49 -0700, Ed Seedhouse wrote
(in article ):
On Mar 26, 10:10=A0am, Audio Empire wrote:
I was just somewhat surprised at how GOOD these old amps
actually were and thought I would share it with the group. Except for a n=
ew
set of tubes and a couple of new filter caps in the power supply, and
cleaning the controls, these amps' signal paths were untouched.
I don't know why you would be surprised since this has been know for
decades. Tube amps that were essentially transparent were
designed back in the 1940's I believe, and some were in production in
the 1950's if my memory serves me. Maybe it was the sixties but
somewhere around then the Leak .01 amplifier was sold in England. It
was +- 1 db from 20-20000 hz and had less than 0.1 percent distortion.
Yes, The Leak did have the published specs you quote. AT ONE WATT! That was a
common ploy in the 1950's and 1960's to publish spectacular specs, then
follow them with an asterisk. When you find the asterisk's foot-note (usually
in tiny print) it would say "at one Watt".
Actually, until quite recently, tube amps were all over the place. Some
sounded good by modern standards, some, not so good. These cheap little Eicos
to which I referred sounded great, even through speakers that were, clearly,
not a good match for them for a number of reasons (but mostly due to
efficiency). That is what surprised me the most.
And of course by the end of the 1960's solid state amplifiers that
were essentially sonically transparent were commonly available.
You mean Like the Dynaco ST-120 running hard into class 'B' with it's VISIBLE
crossover notch? Or the Acoustech amplifier that went into supersonic
oscillation if you looked at it wrong, and created lots of odd-order
distortion when not blowing its output transistors? Or the early McIntosh SS
deigns that used coupling transformers between stages and sounded dreadful?
Or the early Crown SS power amps that sounded terrible (but in fairness, were
essentially bulletproof. Something you couldn't say of the early Dynacos or
the Harman-Kardon Citation 12, or any other 40-60 Watt/channel amps using
2N3055 output devices...).
These amplifiers did not put out much power it is true, and had
trouble driving the early and inefficient "acoustic suspension" system
that came
to popularity around then. I heard in the 1950's a system that,
though monophonic, would very likely meet the standard of "high
fidelity" even today. Of course records of the day were outclassed by
the CD systems that came later, but I remember listening to the
Shostakovatch fifth on my friend's Dad's monophonic system while I was
still in high school and being quite amazed at the sound quality even
back then from his kit built dynaco amps and preamps driving a
Wharfdale 9 cubic foot corner brick enclosure with a 15" woofer, 8"
midrange and 3" tweeter. That system was efficient for sure and the
30 or 40 watts from the Dynaco kit could drive it to extraordinary
levels and I had my first taste of real deep and un-boomy bass, not
repeated for many years except at live concerts.. Later that year I
heard our local symphony with an aunt supplying the tickets and was
surprised at how much like the orchestra in front of me sounded to
that old home built Wharfedale speaker.
We can do just as well today for what amounts to a lot less money when
you discount for inflation. But HI-Fi was invented in the 1940's and
could be amazingly good even with the old gigantic speakers that you
pretty well had to have to make things work.
I grew up in that era, and I can tell you that the nostalgia is almost as
colored as much of the equipment from those days. While tube amps like
Mcintosh and Marantz Model 9s and to a lesser extent, Dynacos, were pretty
good, there were lots more that were simply mediocre (mostly due to cheap
output transformers). They measured OK at 1 Watt, as I said above, but as the
power went up, they sounded worse and worse. I have a friend who, until a
couple of years ago, had a stereo system consisting of a pair of Heathkit
WA-P2 preamps and a pair of Heathkit Willaimson power amps playing through a
pair of 2-way speakers consisting of Electrovoice 15" woofers, and
Electrovoice horn tweeters and crossovers mounted in huge "Karlson Kabinet"
enclosures. In spite of the huge woofer, and the imposingly big cabinets, the
system had no real bass below about 50 Hz and the horn tweeters were beamy
and overly bright and edgy. His electronics sounded OK at low levels, but
anything above that and they became pretty colored. I'll say this for the
system, it would play LOUD. Those Williamson amps were only 25 Watts/channel
but they would play those very efficient speakers very loudly. Too bad you
didn't want to listen listen to them "loud"
OTOH, I know an old guy (in his mid eighties) who has a pair of Altec Lansing
speaker systems that have bass to die for. Each 50-inch by 65-inch by 30-inch
enclosure houses FOUR 15-inch Altec woofers (that's EIGHT altogether)! I've
never heard a home stereo system pressurize a room like that system does. The
bass not only goes subterranean, but it also can be felt like none I've ever
heard outside of a concert hall. Unfortunately, the excellence of those huge
speaker systems stops at 500 Hz where the simply HORRID Altec "treble horns"
take over. I've known a number of people who had systems incorporating these
terrible sounding devices. I've never heard them sound good on music (I guess
they were OK in a movie theatre for speech intelligibility, but god help them
for music).
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