Transformer Brands?

[dragonbat13]

Are thordarson transformers any good? What about Stancor? What brands are known to be good for guitar amps and which should be avoided? Thanks

[sliberty]

I haven't had the pleasure, but I always read about how sought after the Stancor's are. You'll usually pay quite a lot for a nice one on eBay. Some here have used them for TW's, and I have also heard of them being used for smaller Marshall designs.

[David Root]

Both are old-line companies with decent reputations. Some others are :
Schumacher, (606) who built for Fender in the BF days and earlier, and are still in business. I believe Antique Electronics sells these in their Fender replacement line.
Mercury Magnetics, recently transformed into a serious outfit with clones of old designs and "improvements" on same, all at very high retail prices. I have used their stuff and it is very good.
Heyboer (966) relatively new to the MI amp business but very high quality and reasonable pricing.
There is another company that I think Fender also used, Electrical Windings is the name I think (166).
Allen Amps, David Allen. These are designed to Allen's specs and built by 166 (PTs) and 996 (OTs). I have used these and they are excellent trannies, reasonably priced. All Fender types including the SE designs, which I have also used, in a Marshall circuit with a single E34L.
Ted Weber of speaker fame also has a line of inexpensive units from China, designed by Ted. I have not used these, but have heard they are good value for the price.

For Hiwatt fans, there is a company cloning the Partridge trannies for the 50/100W original HWs. Many people are cloning Marshall trannies too, many actually built by Heyboer, and there are folks like Toneslut and Moose doing Ken Fischer's designs too.

Sorry, the numbers in parenthesis eg (606) are EIA mfr. code numbers. For those of you who don't know, these are on the PT/OT in a code of numbers, e.g. 9660526, which means built by Heyboer (966) in 2005, week 26.

[funkmeblue]

ever hear of BTC? number 3012......also has 92-33

[dragonbat13]

How is the quality of Triad. Also I have some Iron off of some heathkit home monoblock Hi-fi amps. What are these like?

[David Root]

BTC rings a bell, I'll look in my EIA lists. Triad are priced about the same as Stancor, typically, so OTBE should be about as good. Heathkit, I dunno. Got any EIA codes?

I didn't mention Hammond in my last post. Some people say Hammond OTs are for HiFi not guitar amps. But then THE JTM45 transformer, Radiospares De Luxe, was an off the shelf HiFi OT.

One new one I also didn't mention is Trafomatic. This is an outfit in Belgrade, E. Europe. The company is owned by a guitar player, NO s**t! He has an engineer in the US, Boris Sasic, who will take orders for customized TOROIDAL PTs and OTs as one-offs. I found out about them on this forum. Prices are VERY fair, and I am building them into my current design, 2x6550 w/ 4-stage preamp +PI, 4+0 architecture. People here posted very good reviews, so I took a chance. Will be hearing them in about 3 weeks. I just ordered a second set to run a pair of KT66s at 8K Z pri. Nice thing about the custom order is I was able to specify 12.6V and 6.3V PT taps, so I can put 12.6 VDC on the preamp heaters without having to find room on the chassis for a separate 12.6V filament tranny. Also 50V bias tap, no problem. On the OT I spec'd 8K and 6k6 UL taps. Both PT and OT, $186.50 delivered to my door! Try buying just the OT from Plitron for that money. Only downside is you have to pay upfront on PayPal and wait a few weeks while they get built.

[dragonbat13]

I have a pic of a transformer I think is out of a heathkit. I am going to start a new topic on it.