Hi-Fi?

[Gibsonman63]

I am veering in a different direction here, but why not start by restoring a console stereo? You can pick one up for next to nothing, recap it, then go from there. You can get in on the cheap and decide if that's really what you want or just a pleasant memory.

I picked up a Curtis Mathis console a few years back at an estate sale and have aspirations of one day recapping it and dropping my Dual turntable in there to replace the Voice of Music turntable. Mine is all tube, 60W per side. It works, but the tuner drifts and the filter caps need to be replaced, so it hums a bit. The good news is that it was only $25 and it matches my mid-centrury modern decor.

[davent]

Transcendent Sound Grounded Grid Preamp is available as a kit or the schematic can be found in Bruce Rozenblit's book Audio Reality, found a copy in the local library. That book also has a number of of power amps as well as tube phono preamp. Scratch built the preamp as my first tube project, simple to build and works/sounds great.
http://www.transcendentsound.com/Transc ... ality.html Bruce's book of anti-snake oil/mojo with projects.

Solen overkill, totally unneccessary but looks cool!
[IMG:800:600]http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc30 ... G_4753.jpg[/img]
[IMG:800:600]http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc30 ... G_4752.jpg[/img]

His newest book Tubes and Circuits, has schematic/plans for a 15w OTL, a 300B OTL and several tube tester/analyzers.

http://www.transcendentsound.com/Transc ... nblit.html

Some of what he has designed is also available as kits here. http://www.transcendentsound.com/Transcendent/Home.html

Morgan Jones also has a couple of interesting books on building tube HiFi amps. Again they're in the local library, Valve Amplifiers and... Building Valve Amplifiers.

dave

[Colossal]

Absolutely killer! Now I understand why hi-fi pots have those long shafts! Put the pot where it's needed in the circuit, not add more wire to bring the circuit to the pot. Brilliant!

[xtian]

Dave, is that your build, above? I can't believe you used all that expensive filtering, and then plain old NYLON zip ties!! You know that will suck the tone right out.

[davent]

Dave, is that your build, above? I can't believe you used all that expensive filtering, and then plain old NYLON zip ties!! You know that will suck the tone right out.

Yes, first effort with tubes quite a number of years back and don't worry I've corrected my ways, zipties on new projects are now colour co-ordinated unobtainium.

[Colossal]

New White Zip ties sound the clearest but I've got some NOS ones that are really great. I tried some new issue Blue ones in an amp but the results were depressing (ba-dum-bum)

[rp]

Absolutely killer! Now I understand why hi-fi pots have those long shafts! Put the pot where it's needed in the circuit, not add more wire to bring the circuit to the pot. Brilliant!

Well if that amazed you, this will make your week:
bottom -> http://www.hificollective.co.uk/compone ... eters.html

Now you can put that VVR at the back with short runs and still have the knob at the front. I wanted to be the first here to do it but hey, go ahead. Welborne Labs, Parts Connexion, others stateside may have it too. Someone somewhere has the bushing for the rod going through the front panel smoothly rather than just through the drilled hole. This hifi crap really adds up, you'll you'll go over $3K on your amps if you don't watch it.

BTW the OP wants to get that lower-mid boosted, bandwidth limited, oval alnico, rich-old sound - what made Walter Cronkite Sound authoritative to your dad and Old Blue Eyes so sexy to your mom. Modern hifi suggestions are unnecessary and expensive here and maybe detrimental to the goal. What Aurora said, ST70 and PAS3 will get that sound as will an old SCA-35 integrated for even less - leave the CCs, do replace the green Chiclets. If the OP wants to go DYI for the fun then cloning any of the famous old amps will do, but the more venerable - ie Quad, Radford, Mac the harder it will be to get the same voicing. You should be able to nail a perfect ST70/35 however.

I am veering in a different direction here, but why not start by restoring a console stereo?

Great suggestion! If the old alnico speakers haven't had a pencil poked through them you'll be that much closer to throaty lushness.

No one needs more than about 20-30W for (average size) living room use. OK, you want to power a second pair of speakers in another room, consider 40-50W just because you can. The point is, EL84's or 6V6's will do the job nicely.

Not so much max volume but dynamics, especially if the listener likes orchestral music. For guitar when the amp runs out it sounds great but in hifi everything collapses and even at modest volume you'll need reserves for the peaks if you don't want the sound and image to squash. El34 or 6l6GC pairs are the sweet spot for jazz, quartet, and rocking old farts. For an opera and orchestral fan you need 6550 or KT88s unless they are mellow listners. I never took to EL84 hifi amps except for back-ground listening, and even then - little bass and they just don't have enough jam. I was very impressed with the Shindo EL84 Montille but I wouldn't have bought it.

It all depends if the OP wants a sideboard system for the dining room or something central to the living room or something to smoke cigars to in the den - er, man cave.

[M Fowler]

Davent that is one hell of a nice build.

I have been studying and entertaining the idea of building a stereo tube amp as well but a local guy has an old McIntosh I might pickup.

Mark

[davent]

Thanks guys!

Keystone manufacture (?) the panel bearings and couplers, both available from Mouser. I like them alot.

Chip preamp.
[IMG:800:600]http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc30 ... 0625-1.jpg[/img]
Firefly lineout.
[IMG:640:480]http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc30 ... G_0367.jpg[/img]
dave

[rp]

Davent, what are your lay-down tube boards? Totally homemade? Something like this (image/link) that you add an L-Bracket? Or something off the shelf ready to go?
http://www.partsconnexion.com/terminal_iag.html

I've been wanting to build this pre (pdf) for 15 years but Hifi just eats your money up. One upside - no Tolexing!

FYI There's some nice builds here:
http://www.megahertzaudio.it/

[Aurora]

Hifi just eats your money up.

Not necessairly - unless you buy into all the BS about esoteric components - by some of the more singel minded referred to as REAL HiFi.........
but - it's not cheap, either....

if you look carefully around teh DIYAuduo, you'll find quite a number of posters that refrain from all the mumbo jumbo, and still get very good results. A good tube amp won't necessearly cost very much more to build than some of the more hefty guitar amps presented here.

[davent]

Davent, what are your lay-down tube boards? Totally homemade? Something like this (image/link) that you add an L-Bracket? Or something off the shelf ready to go?
http://www.partsconnexion.com/terminal_iag.html

/

Boards are just homemade, piece of PCB a terminal strip or two and angle brackets or a piece of angled aluminum to mount it on.

Firefly [IMG:640:380]http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc30 ... G_0373.jpg[/img]

GGP [IMG:800:600]http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc30 ... G_4751.jpg[/img]

This one's garolite with eyelets so i could mount components on both sides of the board, in hind sight going to be a pain to go back in and make mods. PCB with mounted pot is the power scaling board, so will be using the same old trick to operate from the front panel.

[IMG:800:600]http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc30 ... G_3867.jpg[/img]

[Colossal]

Boards are just homemade, piece of PCB a terminal strip or two and angle brackets or a piece of angled aluminum to mount it on.

Firefly [IMG:640:380]http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc30 ... G_0373.jpg[/img]

GGP [IMG:800:600]http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc30 ... G_4751.jpg[/img]

Beautiful to behold! Very slick application of the terminal strips to both support the tubes and place parts.

[Structo]

No kidding!

Those look incredible.

[renshen1957]

Output trannies are very expensive for SE hifi. You mention a tube preamp but what is the plan for the power amp?

I read a review of OTs on the web somewhere, little SE ones but for hifi, and the standard edcors came in 2nd after some fancier stuff, the universal hammond was worse and as a bottom benchmark the triode champ OT was rejected totally. So maybe edcor will get you 80% of the way there. Now if the OP's goal is a a real old school amp, with the inherent limited bandwidth and colorations, an Edcor might just get him 97% of the way there. And, you know a Dynaco ST70 circuit with a modest $350 of Triode iron will envelope you like your grandma's old couch. Not for nothing they still resell well in any condition and people are still selling clone kits after 60 years.

Hi,

+one to your comments:

There are also new designs out there that use toroidal OTs and PT and also a few minimalists circuits with tubes. Others are incorporating applications from SS into tube design.

I am surprised no one has yet mentioned decoupled power supplies, Filamentary Triodes, exotic resistors, incredibly pricey capacitors (Silver Foil in oil).

Cross pollination has already occurred between tone produce (guitar amps) and sound reproduction (Hi-Fi).

As 50 year+ equipment, I currently own a The Fisher Control (integrated) amplifier X202-C (last tube amp the original Fisher company made before the names was sold to a low-Fi Japanese company). It blows away most of the so called Hi-End SS stuff marketed today. Imaging, sound stage, etc, you name it.

A Bang & Olafsen TT, a Jolida JD100 CD player (uses two 12AX7), DVD player, my computer, ect. are sound sources.

The amp beautifully renders modern, classical, easy listening, Contemporary music from China, Chinese Opera, Bach Organ Music, Rock from Little Richard, 1960's onward as though you could reach out and touch the musicians.

It doesn't sound like the old Magnivox Stereo (or Stereo/TV/Radio) Console I used to spin records on.

Similar to Guitar Amps, Speakers make one of the bigger impacts on one's sonic experience. I play through a pair of Polk 2-way speakers. So my set up would be looked down upon by some as Mid-Fi. I haven't the money (or inclination) to invest in Planar, Ribbon, Electrostatic speakers, and I are refrained when offered a set of vintage Klipsch Heresy speakers ("they were made for your amp").

The old consoles had speakers for adequate for low to moderate level, not concert level music. Paper cones, sometimes in Hi end models Horn Tweeters, and sometimes the consoles were supplied what was called full range (just woofers) speakers commonly housed in the console cabinet without the benefit of actual speaker cabinets. The Old Magnavox, Had 15 inch woofers on either side the picture tube and giant horn tweeters were mounted at a 90 degree angle (on the sides of the console). However flawed the old console was absolutely fantastic when Vangelis Chariots of Fire sound track was played through (either as background music or cranked up).

Paul McCartney of the Beatles used a Leak Amp for a short time as his Bass amplification (prior to the Vox gentlemen's agreement with Brian Epstein). Sunn Amps were Dynaco Amps,; Jimi Hendrix had a brief endorsement deal with Sunn that he immediately back out of when he was expected to use them touring.

The Iron in many vintage upscale Hi-Fi rigs are larger than comparable for Guitar. And the price for Toroidal have down quite a bit. A wide band width stereo with a minimal component design shouldn't cost an arm and a leg if one chooses their parts wisely, and not through Voodoo. I am waiting to build my, but I have too many work commitments.

Best Regards,

Steve