A great construction manual for excellent amplifiers


I will be honest in that I have only built two of Slone's amps to this
point, but the performance of them has been utterly astonishing (for
the price). I am sure I could go out and spend some money and get equal
or better performance but if you are a competent electronics hobbyist
you should have no problem matching expensive amps in terms of
performance with a VERY limited budget. Not to mention there is a lot
of pride that comes with making your own. This book is well laid out
and steps you through the stages of the "standard" Lin topology of
audio amplification. Mr. Slone goes into great detail on how each stage
works and performs but please note you should be familiar with
electronics going in, as this is NOT a beginner's book, but rather a
book made for those with some experience wanting to expand their
knowledge.

To the potential buyer: I highly recommend this book if your interest
lies in building relatively inexpensive high quality TRANSISTOR BASED
amplifiers. If your preference is the vacuum tube sound then simply go
buy a vacuum tube amp book. I am sure Randy would agree with me on
that. What you should not expect out of this book is a thorough
background on electronics. For that you will need other books.

I would just like to respond to some of the negative reviews below. I
respect everyone's opinions but much of what is said below is a lie
about this book. Most importantly though I want to make sure potential
customers understand that at NO point in ANY of Mr. Slone's books does
he denigrate the use of or the users of vacuum tubes or any other
alternative methods of audio amplification technology. What he does do
is tell you the facts. In fact, he promotes the use of your own opinion
throughout his books, even going so far as to say that the beauty of
building these yourself is that you CAN do whatever you want. In any
case, I think it is wrong to potential Amazon customers to read how
terrible Mr. Slone is for denigrating mainstream audio when actually he
doesn't. The fact is that transistors are more transparent to the audio
signal than vacuum tubes (Remember, a perfect amplifier in general
would have the exact same signal at the input as the output with only a
higher amplitude). Whether the transparency of solid state is good or
bad is COMPLETELY up to you and all in your listening preferences, as
Randy Slone makes clear throughout this book.