LampizatOr Golden Atlantic + TRP

Very nice pictures, Boris, and welcome to the forum and this thread! It sounds as though you have spent a lot of time putting your TRP through many combinations and I bet you enjoyed every minute.

Most of the tubes you mentioned are not readily available here in Canada and I assume the US, other than by eBay extortion or overseas order. Either way rather expensive. So it's nice to have someone like yourself provide such positive information so it's not such a gamble to purchase blind (or should I say deaf).

As you may have read recently here many of us are using relatively inexpensive small signal triodes and having fabulous luck. Have you tried any such tubes like the 6J5 and it's many variants?

This picture shows a Wizard type 80 rectifier with a pair of STC 2C26a triodes. The STCs are likely more common in Europe, incidentally. IMG_20250316_145807.jpg

Cheers,
Robert
 
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Thank you Robert. Exactly, it was very peasant journey. I have Sylvania type 80 rectifier but I haven"t used it in Lampi.I also haven't used any of mentioned small signal triodes.
I have used small inexpensive output pentodes el84 (EI Niš, Tesla, Telefunken), El86 (Telefunken) and Russian 6p14p and 6p15p from various producers. Out of all this only satisfactory results were with 6p15p, but not even close to big output Pentodes.

Cheers Boris
 
In my humble opinion, for my system at least, best combination of tubes for Lampi TRP (tried at leat 30 combination) are as follows:

1. U18/20 rectifier (any brand), EL 12 spec Telefunken output

2. U 52 Brimar rectifier, F2a11 Siemens output

3. USAF 596 rectifier, Tesla 4654 (very close to this is Tesla EL51) output
Hello Boris!
Welcome to the forum and the TRP thread. Great pictures! I’m sure you’ve spent a lot of time working with the tubes you’ve mentioned above- all really good stuff!

These combinations are definitely part of the original TRP playbook which I’m leaving a copy of with you. This file lists all comments on TRP used pentodes/rectifiers as they were commented on up until the point at which I purchased my Golden Atlantic. Anything posted after that is in the thread.

I think you’ll be really surprised when you give indirectly heated single or dual triodes a try- they definitely push things in a different direction and are in a way more suited for the way the TRP is designed to run. Many single triodes will run directly but always confirm against the data sheets before purchasing. The dual triodes will need adapters.

There is a small group of us here that are running triodes pretty much exclusively now and if you’d like any suggestions just let us know as we often share our experiences within the thread or via direct messaging. Good to hear from you!

Designsfx
 

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Thank you Designsfx. For sure I will try inderectly heated trioda. DHT tubes are my favorites and complete system revolves around it.
In order to avoid trial and error which is time consuming, please send me you recommendation for small inderectly heated triods. For rectifiers I have here more tnan 50 different options already checked.

KR Boris
 
Thank you Designsfx. For sure I will try inderectly heated trioda. DHT tubes are my favorites and complete system revolves around it.
In order to avoid trial and error which is time consuming, please send me you recommendation for small inderectly heated triods. For rectifiers I have here more tnan 50 different options already checked.

KR Boris
I’m not sure if you’re dac is SE or Balanced but if you’d like to creep up on this just to get a taste I would recommend buying a matched set/quad of black metal 6J5’s to start with.
I believe my first quad were 1940’s GE but Tungsol, KenRad and Raytheon are also really good if they’re NOS. Give it a shot!
 
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Hi fellow TweRPs, I thought it was time to do a brief update regarding my original post, having rebuilt my outboard filament power supply with some convenience mods.

Original Post

For fun, I'm calling the project box the Voltinator™. The ™ is just a joke; I invented nothing and have no interest in selling anything here.

I decided there was no value in having both barrel and aviation connectors on the front and also decided a single switch on the rear of the chassis for switching the output voltages was preferable over the two switches on the front (one for each channel). The aviation connectors I had used were kind of a pain in the neck from a mounting perspective in the 1/4" acrylic. So I swapped them out for ones with a mounting flange.

Voltinator mkII Front.jpg

The back now has a single SPDT switch determines which of the two pairs of buck converters gets power - one pair is set for 2.5v and the other pair set to 6.3v.
I swapped out the power switch for a DPDT and integrated a simple 12v optocoupler to provide an additional power-up choice: input trigger. Pity the Lampizator doesn't have an output trigger option, but my preamp does.

Voltinator mkII Back.jpg

Now, you might well wonder why I would choose to have 6.3v as an output option when the DAC itself sends 6.3v to the tube socket - so why use the Voltinator™ at all for 6.3v tubes... True, and originally I had 2.5v and 3.0v as my output options. I really like the sound of the 2.5v type 27 tubes, they are some of the best sounding options I tried in the TRP. I have a small number of 3.0v tubes I have yet to try and I'll get there eventually, but one of the things that really stood out by not standing out was the pitch black background. Wow, were the 27s ever quiet! Now noise has never even been on my radar with the TRP and I've always marvelled at how clean sounding and pure it is. But there was something almost eerily silent about the 27s and how that increased their apparent dynamics.

@Designsfx , who is similarly experimenting with outboard filament power, and I compared notes and postulate that this "extra" silence may be a function of the outboard filament power. Whether due to removal of that load from the Lampi or isolating that power circuit outside of the TRP chassis, we didn't know, but it was worth a try. And, as it turns out, I do have several type 37 tubes and these are very nearly the same as the 27 except they are 6.3v and consume demand less current...

So I put the old Philco type 37 tubes directly in my TRP, using a passive tube adaptor (no Voltinator™) and listened to them for a week. I had previously used them and really liked their performance and, in fact, had likened the type 27 to them after first heard the 27s.

Philco 37.jpg

After a week my ears were re-acquainted with them and I then switched them over to Voltinator™ power. It's only been a couple days but there is something a little more compelling about them. I have to say it's been worthwhile, if only subtle. Indeed the sound does seem like it's coming from a pitch black eternal background. As I say, subtle, but readily apparent. Bass impact did not seem to be affected and is to the same high standard as I've come to expect from these tubes when powered conventionally. But I was surprised that midrange dynamics seem better and seemed to be a little more saturated in detail. Reverb trails in empty recording spaces seem to go on beautifully. I didn't note any surreal "microphonic euphonics" that I occasionally experienced with the type 27 tubes, but the music definitely has a very lively presence.

This was an easy experiment because the type 37 has the same pin out as the 27. But now I wonder about all the other 6.3v tubes I've already listened to and how they would fare with external filament power.... groan....

Voltinator & Philco 37.jpg

Cheers,
Robert
 
Excellent Robert!
And as we’ve discussed, we definitely need to keep studying the effects of adding the external filament supply. Time will tell as I quickly tire of A/B tests- I’d rather just kick back and listen to the music but as you’ve noted above I too noticed a difference when running the 27’s on my setup immediately after incorporating my “lighter” version of the Voltinator. Great stuff!
 

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