SET amp owners thread
- Thread starter bonzo75
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I got my Audion SET 845 Black Shadow back. Its a Black Shadow 2 now. Its kind of noisy. It's pretty fat sounding. Extansion to bass is decent. Extension to highs are ok. Maybe more fair.
Compared to my Found Music Blade PP KT88. The Blade has way better upper extension. The Blade detail is light years better. The Blade bass is not as heavy. But its much tighter and natural. Blade does need more heft. The Dartzeel didn't have near.the detail of the Blade, but the bass was more fleshed out.
Audion gets put in here and there, but pulled out pretty quick. It sounds colored. Its.nice, but colored.
Compared to my Found Music Blade PP KT88. The Blade has way better upper extension. The Blade detail is light years better. The Blade bass is not as heavy. But its much tighter and natural. Blade does need more heft. The Dartzeel didn't have near.the detail of the Blade, but the bass was more fleshed out.
Audion gets put in here and there, but pulled out pretty quick. It sounds colored. Its.nice, but colored.
That is an incredible lineup of Kondo amps! Thanks for the pictures and report, bonzo75.
Did you bring along the Bach cantatas disc listed as a reference at Zero Distortion, and if so, how did it fare on the field coil speakers? I don’t have a lot of experience with field coils and am curious to how they sort through complex counterpoint and timbres - thank you
Yes. Looking at getting an Apollo Audio 211.
The Audion is in an enclosure that is of a poor design. The iron is nothing special. I use Elrog 845 tubes.
I have little to base my perception of SET on.
But, I am very confident the Blade amp has far better detail and creates much more accurate and real sounding instruments than any amp I have heard anywhere. But. It only 40 watts and it does not have as much bass heft as I would like. Hence I want to try a swarm subwoofer.
The Audion is in an enclosure that is of a poor design. The iron is nothing special. I use Elrog 845 tubes.
I have little to base my perception of SET on.
But, I am very confident the Blade amp has far better detail and creates much more accurate and real sounding instruments than any amp I have heard anywhere. But. It only 40 watts and it does not have as much bass heft as I would like. Hence I want to try a swarm subwoofer.
The 211 are around $6k for a stereo version. The 833 is over $20k. They had them out at PAF. Looked nice.
Hi, I stopped using CDs and streaming for evaluation of speakers and amps long ago. I did out of interest compare his Marconi PX4s in the Lampi because I hadn't heard the Marconi PX4s before (though I had done a detailed compare of different Marconi PX25s with KR). I do love that Bach Cantata, and other cantatas in general though.
Regarding field coil, I would suggest you don't pigeon hole things in single drivers and field coil kind of theory. This is what DIY beginners do, it is the equivalent of making 2 curries at home and thinking all Indian curries would taste similar, or going to Olive Garden and thinking that's how Italian food is.
You can make a good horn out of various drivers, provided top and bottom are all coherent, integrated, aligned well - that requires matching of drivers, crossovers, and horn structure.
I have compared at Slivercore's GIP field coil, Line Magnetic field coil, and his own. The GIP sounded the best, the LM the least. A lot of people have tried to make their own field coils from lowthers and Altecs - some might have succeeded. I believe Dave Slagle also made FC of Lowther and from Radian as well. The Dava field coil and Audio note field coil carts have no similarities in sound.
Apart from being field coil, the Feastrex is also single driver. I have heard 4 single drivers now - the same Yamamura in two different rooms, Pnoe/AER in various upsteam electronic chains, and Cube Audio in 3 systems. A single driver can sound pretty bad till it sounds great. And it sounds great in extremely limited electronic chains. The Yamamura worked only with the Yam electronics, Pietro never got it to sing with Kondo and Shindo. The Pnoe with the Mayer 46 and Vyger RS could be the best of systems, could be awful with minor changes. The cube did not sound remotely good in the set ups I heard.
The owner of the Feastrex himself will tell you that his cabinet is a compromise on size. If you want to audition feastrex, you might want to contact Lotus Granada and see how it sounds. But think of it as auditioning Feastrex Lotus Granada, don't think of it as auditioning field coil or single driver. It will have no similarities with WE field coil or with Pnoe AER Vyger RS.
The Pnoe AER and the WE work best with very low watt amps.
The Feastrex I heard sounded progressively better with higher wattage. The Gakuon mk1 at 50w, then we tried a GM70 locally made I like at 14w with lot of drive, and copper tube. The lower watt Kondos were not as suited for this speaker. The difference between a small bass reflex cabinet and a backloaded horn the size of pnoe is huge.
But to your query, yes both field coil and single drivers can play large scale if set up properly. At the same time if you want to go this route, you should get a good horn set up you hear properly and like, not wait for field coil or single driver only.
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Cool! Just a small point of clarification: Souga is silver, not copper. At least not mine, which is from c. 2015.
The one before Souga, the Neiro, was copper output transformers…Souga has always been silver.
The physics say yes. Constant magnetic flux, for one thing. Permanent magnets are Not a good way to make the best drivers. That’s clear.
But as in all things in this hobby, it’s not black and white. The main issue with FC is that there are very few modern ones.
But yes, I do not take an expensive 6 figure speaker seriously if it has permanent magnets.
Wolf von Langa is probably the most advanced modern designer of FC speakers today.
I read about the Feastrex Lotus Granada.
Whats intetesting is the use of a fully active digital crossover. I know people with around $100k into vinyl that use a BACCH with ORC as they say they can not hear the digital processing.
If active crossovers are so good today, why do we not embrace them. Sure, no one wants to buy 3 sets of amps. But, the amps could become a much different device that cost far less as gripping power becomes less necessary when your direct coupled to a driver.
Whats intetesting is the use of a fully active digital crossover. I know people with around $100k into vinyl that use a BACCH with ORC as they say they can not hear the digital processing.
If active crossovers are so good today, why do we not embrace them. Sure, no one wants to buy 3 sets of amps. But, the amps could become a much different device that cost far less as gripping power becomes less necessary when your direct coupled to a driver.
Thivian labs 211 mono amps no complicated construction, the iron used is beyond reproach. Disadvantage: the thing is heavy like lead. Pair 8.5k€
211 POWER MONOBLOCK - Thivanlabs
thivanlabs.com
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