How does your Sayes 45 compare to the Burgess? What 45 tubes do you use?
@Bobvin is in Portland, and he has my favourite turntable, vyger Atlantis, which is especially good due to its linear tracking arm. Schroeder’s top arm at Steve Dobbins, the LT, is a pivoted linear tracker.
a lot of this gear including Mike’s is very expensive, and may be out of your budget. Nevertheless, it is good to hear all these different approaches to tables and systems. You might not isolate impact of each in your first listen, but overall an approach might be worth investigating further for you.
If you visit Seattle, Solypsa’s STST Motus 2 is one of the highest value reasonablY priced tables left so you might want to listen to that as well.
I need to edit my 'About', but I don't see how to do that. I need to do that to update speakers and gear. My speakers now are a custom setup: JBL 077 slot tweeter, running 10k and up, Altec 1003b with 288c compression drivers running 400hz up to 10k, and Altec 416 woofer running 400hz down in a custom Jospech Crowe Mini Onken Box.
Then I have the Van Den Hul - The Grail on the Vinyl side and the Abbas 4.0 DAC on the digital side running through a custom remote-controlled TVC into a custom SET 6a3/6b4g dc-coupled power amp.
The Sayes 45 (7193 drivers and 5y3 changed over to Type 80 rectified) is great, it was my favorite amp for quite a while, it has that SET magic and the romantic nature of the 45 tube. I've used normal Philco and Sylvania ST-45's in this amp and they sound great. I also had a set of TJ Globe 45, which sounded amazing, but they had some manufacturing defects, so I had to send them back it turns out at that point TJ wasn't making 45 globes anymore, so I got their large ST-45s as a replacement and those sounded good int his amp, but not as open and airy as the Globes.
The Burgess 45 is a PP amp, with 2-45's per channel and it is much different sounding than the Sayes. The Burgess has a lot more ( 6WPC vs. 1.8WPC of the Sayes) This amp loses the SET magic and romantic nature of the 45. It's much more punchy, but it was having some issues with background noise from the amp, so it sat on the sideline.
The amp I have now is a DC-coupled SET 6A3/6B4G with a 6dj8 driver and is solid-state rectified. It has Tango Iron and was built by a guy here locally. This amp is where I have stopped, because it sounds great, powers my system well and I just forget about it. It does everything I want and sounds fantastic. I'd still like to try some version of the 10y or 801a.
My budget isn't huge comparatively, but I'm also able to save if something is compelling, but out of reach for the time being. I think one of the largest limiting factors for me will be my room.
@Bobvin I live in SE Portland in the Mt Tabor Neighborhood, so I'd love to meetup with you for a listen if you're open to it!
@Solypsa I'd love to visit you too when up in Seattle if that works out for you too.
