I am sick of failing amplifiers

[Lagonda]

I love spending other audiophiles' cash.

I know your always wanted equipment with the name "Mayer" on it, one day you will have some tubes Marc

 

[spiritofmusic]

Milan, re your pitch as soothsayer...don't give up the day job. Mayer Elrog 211 tubes will only happen if I can sort auto-bias on my Nats.

 

[spiritofmusic]

Kingsrex, I only suggest the Mayer Elrog 845s, because my experience of the original Elrogs in my Black Shadows was so positive, such an improvement over stock.

 

[sefischer1]

I've owned a long series of amps which have all been reliable even when bought used: Harmon Kardon Citation 19, Marantz MA 30 (4), MA 22 (4), Levinson 27.5 (2), 331 (2), Threshold T400, Accuphase A50 (2), Classe CT-500 (2), CA-5100, BAT VK150se (2), Luxman M 800a (2), Pass XA-60.5 (2), XA-100.8(2)
Sounds like many of you need to stop buying crap from guys who think they know what they're doing. There's no shortage of well engineered reliable amps out there.
It's laughable when someone replies that the original poster's amps were unknown to them and then calls out another totally unknown product.
Is this site cruised by sharks looking for fat fish looking for that shiny bait?

 

[sefischer1]

Kingsrex, I only suggest the Mayer Elrog 845s, because my experience of the original Elrogs in my Black Shadows was so positive, such an improvement over stock.

I get it, some of you love tubes. Unfortunately, amateur designers are pushing these devices and circuits way beyond practical limits without experience of the trade offs and complications until you call them to tell them about them. Product design? That's a whole other can of worms. Let's see, get a basic circuit from somewhere, buy some parts, wire em up, power it up: No smoke? Like a new parent, damn it's the best thing they ever heard. Sell it!

 

[Kingrex]

I get it, some of you love tubes. Unfortunately, amateur designers are pushing these devices and circuits way beyond practical limits without experience of the trade offs and complications until you call them to tell them about them. Product design? That's a whole other can of worms. Let's see, get a basic circuit from somewhere, buy some parts, wire em up, power it up: No smoke? Like a new parent, damn it's the best thing they ever heard. Sell it!

My Casablanca in a nutshell. Atmasphere took a hold of them and fixed the circuit issues. Now they are pretty decent. Surely limited by the $49 iron. But sound pretty good anyways.

 

[spiritofmusic]

I get it, some of you love tubes. Unfortunately, amateur designers are pushing these devices and circuits way beyond practical limits without experience of the trade offs and complications until you call them to tell them about them. Product design? That's a whole other can of worms. Let's see, get a basic circuit from somewhere, buy some parts, wire em up, power it up: No smoke? Like a new parent, damn it's the best thing they ever heard. Sell it!

Hmm, analog designers even worse. I mean, 12" diameter disc pulled by an elastic band, and a bit of diamond on the end of a stick. So many amateurs at that too Lol.

Otoh, we do have some great, COMPETENT, tube amp designers...Lamm, Mayer, Ares Cerat, Atmasphere, BAT, Audion, Nat, Thrax, Ypsilon, KR, Aesthetix, Allnic etc.

 

[Atmasphere]

Unfortunately, amateur designers are pushing these devices and circuits way beyond practical limits without experience of the trade offs and complications until you call them to tell them about them.

I've bemoaned the simple fact that there is far too little engineering talent in the high end audio world many time. But that doesn't make it better- IMO/IME if I have a complaint, usually the only solution is to get out there and show them how its done.

 

[Kingrex]

I've bemoaned the simple fact that there is far too little engineering talent in the high end audio world many time. But that doesn't make it better- IMO/IME if I have a complaint, usually the only solution is to get out there and show them how its done.

Remember how I provided contacts where you would be able to explain the simple fixes you applied to greatly improve my amps, and no one would return your call. At least last I heard. Seems some people don't even seem to care.

 

[Kingrex]

Egads. I swapped my Shuguang C tube for a Shuguang B tube. It redplated. I ran with the distributor just rebuilt the amps for a pretty good chunk of change. They had to have checked the bias. My tubes must be bad.

I orderd the Psvane ACME 845. They redplate. Did they check the bias. No. WHY NOT. Even the bypass cap which is on the spec as 47uF was left as 22uF. But hey, I got a great price. I have had it with the distributor. I complained about 6 or 7 deficiencies in the rebuild and he denies everything and calls me the worst customer. He's an ass. And I told him so.

At least Audion in EU has been super cool and responsive. They told me which cap and resistor are the bias component and what are good replacements. So now I have to order parts and break out my solder iron. It's hard to find good help. Especially local help. If the cap and resistor don't work, I have to find a competent tech. I will never use the USA rep again.

 

[Gregadd]

I've bemoaned the simple fact that there is far too little engineering talent in the high end audio world many time. But that doesn't make it better- IMO/IME if I have a complaint, usually the only solution is to get out there and show them how its done.

This puts me in a difficult position. Having the best wood seem to always be a good idea. IME the better the engineer the more he clings to measurements. After all, "numbers don't lie.b" Linear distortion is their forte'. A young engineer with open mind and a good pair of ears is my choice. I'm just saying.

 

[Atmasphere]

I swapped my Shuguang C tube for a Shuguang B tube.

Any chance that this amp is set up for the 'C' variant? If so other tubes might not work in it without altering the bias setup.

I hear you about finding decent help. In this town there's almost no-one that does tube or high end solid state anymore, which is why we take pieces in for repair on occasion. But if we weren't also making stuff, its hard to know how much business could be made just off of repair. Most consumer gear is made to be thrown away.

 

[Kingrex]

Any chance that this amp is set up for the 'C' variant? If so other tubes might not work in it without altering the bias setup.

I hear you about finding decent help. In this town there's almost no-one that does tube or high end solid state anymore, which is why we take pieces in for repair on occasion. But if we weren't also making stuff, its hard to know how much business could be made just off of repair. Most consumer gear is made to be thrown away.

I was told it should auto adjust to any tube by Audion. Its pretty confusing to me. The distributor who is not a tech said the cap has nothing to do with the redplating. Audion said the 47 uf cap should give better bass response than the 22 in there. I will try the cap first. If that does not work, i will swap out the 20 year old resistor.
Attached is a photo of the cap and resistor.

 

[Kingrex]

Its suppose to be someint

I was told it should auto adjust to any tube by Audion. Its pretty confusing to me. The distributor who is not a tech said the cap has nothing to do with the redplating. Audion said the 47 uf cap should give better bass response than the 22 in there. I will try the cap first. If that does not work, i will swap out the 20 year old resistor.
Attached is a photo of the cap and resistor.

Its suppose to be something like this

 

[Kingrex]

Its suppose to be someint

Its suppose to be something like this

Its not actually shown on the diagram but its the bypass cap that sits over the resistor with the down arrow on it from point 1

 

[Kingrex]

If it all goes to hell, I guess I can send them on a slow boat to France. Maybe some good wine and cheese will make them smile. In the mean time I may go to the evil dark side and try SS. Maybe one day my business will take on a amp and speaker line. Check out our website. I am following the passion of building out the foundation power in peoples homes. I am running that department. Ultrafast69 (Ed) is the operating owner/sales. I am having custom panelboard built, along with getting a proprietary in wall UL rated wire built. But I would rather put an AU1000 panelboard in your room and hard wire power cables from the panel to the equipment. Rather than run in-wall wire from the house panel to your room. The biggest return is generally turning out to be the rebuild and re-grounding of the primary service in peoples homes. I have my own way of doing it that is very impactful. All NEC compliant. The in room panelboard and associated direct cabling is more than icing on the cake. Its big. But people home loadcenters are a mess. We are nationwide.
Audio-Ultra (audio-ultra.com)

I guess I need to update my signature.

 

[Atmasphere]

Sheesh! A cathode biased amp should bias the power tube correctly. The more current the tube draws, the larger the voltage across the resistor, which then shuts down the current. This suggests two possibilities: the tube (the 'B' tube) was defective in some way OR the cap has failed (shorted)- in which case any tube you put in the socket will redplate, unless the tube is really weak! You might look into this because if that cap is over 20 years old, this could have happened. Otherwise a bypass cap has no influence on the bias of the power tube, but if its value is nearly 50% less than it should be, sounds like someone didn't do their math homework.

Totally FWIW, but if you want an amp that keeps running, we do make amps and they are fairly light (no output transformer) so shipping isn't crazy with them. Being an OTL manufacturer, the biggest marketing problem we had to overcome in the old days was the trope that 'OTLs blow up'. This was caused by the Futterman OTL, which could be unstable if presented with a load it couldn't handle, and NYAL that first bought rights to make the Futterman afterwards. Our claim to fame was the world's first reliable OTL, and we had to make it bulletproof and more reliable than conventional tube amps, else we were going to go out of business pretty quick. Its now been over 45 years, and we've seen some of our first amps come through the shop for refurbishment, still in service after all that time.

Not to put too fine a point on it, but just in that small photo you put up, the amp seems to be a bit of a mess. Capacitors should never be mounted as you see in that photo because the weight of the part will cause it to flop around, bending its leads during shipping. This can cause the leads to fail. If you want to see how an amp should be built if wired point to point, take a look at the video on the home page of our website. Or look at the innards of a Marantz 8B amplifier. Whoever makes a point to point wired amp needs to do a neat job, for no other reason than taking pride in their work. Such amps tend to be built better and hold up better (and often sound better too due to less stray capacitance), simply because of the care of the builder.

Put another way, you can do something with the idea that you're going to 'get rich' or you can do something because you want the thing you are doing to be the best. Seek out the latter and avoid the former! People who are in it for the money produce mediocre service or product, plain and simple. I suspect that some people, seeing the high prices often seen in this industry get in it with dollar signs in their eyes. That's the wrong reason- their product simply won't be as good and certainly reliability will suffer.

 

[Kingrex]

My tech got some tools on my amp and said the resistor is dead on 1000. He said rhe amp is running a perfect 98 watts. So that means I have tubes that are not built correct and can not dissipate 100 watts.

Maybe an OTL one day. We need a show. Hopefully the Pacific NW show will happen. You going Ralph?. We will be a vendor.
Rex

 

[Atmasphere]

Hopefully the Pacific NW show will happen. You going Ralph?

No idea yet. But it seems a nice possibility.

 

[Kingrex]

My tech got some tools on my amp and said the resistor is dead on 1000. He said rhe amp is running a perfect 98 watts. So that means I have tubes that are not built correct and can not dissipate 100 watts.

Maybe an OTL one day. We need a show. Hopefully the Pacific NW show will happen. You going Ralph?. We will be a vendor.
Rex

It seems the Psvane ACME is a 75 watt tube. Not a 100 watt tube. What a joke. Venders that build their premium tube out of spec. Maybe burning them up increases sales.

My tech got some tools on my amp and said the resistor is dead on 1000. He said rhe amp is running a perfect 98 watts. So that means I have tubes that are not built correct and can not dissipate 100 watts.

Maybe an OTL one day. We need a show. Hopefully the Pacific NW show will happen. You going Ralph?. We will be a vendor.
Rex