Redboy, thank you for sharing. That thing is a monster.
Yes very cool.
Extremely well build. Looks like a military amp.
Nice piece man.
Yeah, right? Some of my favorite hifi amps like the Pilot 232 are just a rat's nest by comparison!Most likely a piece gear for telecom or mobile industrial use. This is a good example of how "point-to-point" wiring should be done. Compare that with typical consumer grade equipment of the same age.
I don't know, exactly. I suspect it suffers a little on the frequency extremes, but not terribly.So what's the frequency response of that amplifier?
It's in the system now!Have you tried it yet?
It's in the system now!
I used it for a while when I got it about a year ago, and then pulled it out again. Just put it back in again a couple days ago.
When I first tested it, I brought it up slowly on a variac because it is bone stock, absolutely original. I'm not a proponent of running such old equipment without updating it, but I am loath to make any changes to this thing, if I can avoid it.
You can see in one of the photos above that I was able to use two existing chassis holes to mount the RCA inputs in, and wired the input directly into the second stage of the 6SN7. There'd be way too much gain with the input transformers, and their frequency response isn't all that great anyway if the labels are correct (and I assume they're about right).
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Good point. I tend to give the old bathtubs a pass because they're so much more reliable than old 'lytics, but good to be reminded that they're not infallible! If I decide to run this thing long term, I'll do some more testing.One think to keep in mind is those bathtub capacitors can and do go bad. I would make absolutely sure no DC is getting through any coupling caps to protect those beautiful transformers!
That is funny! I've been watching that one for a while, and would love to hear what it can do. As someone pointed out about my amp, most of the copper in the output transformers is dedicated to windings on the higher impedance secondary taps - they're probably not as robust as their size would suggest. Same goes for those, I'd guess.Look at this one!!!! (No affiliation...)
I think I like yours better (and no doubt it sounds better) but this one is more powerful! And it uses a seldom seen output tube with a name sure to make immature people snicker
Look at this on eBay:
http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=172449265786
RARE Vintage U.S. Army Military Signal Corps VCA RCA? STEREO Tube Amplifier
Love it, Dennis!Very nice amp. I love the old military gear. Here I my tuner.
Glad you like it! As a fellow SE aficionado, I'm sure you can see the potential in it!It is very "delicious". How does it sound compare to the 46 SE mono blocks that you built?
Binh
Good point. I tend to give the old bathtubs a pass because they're so much more reliable than old 'lytics, but good to be reminded that they're not infallible! If I decide to run this thing long term, I'll do some more testing
Love it, Dennis!