As many of you locals know, I've been on a quest for a new tube amplifier line to compliment all the solid state and hybrid stuff I've been carrying. Something that will work well with my lineup of loudspeakers (Harbeth, Usher, and now PSB... although I mostly got PSB for the surround sound packages). But also something that was affordable. I've been through a number of options and nothing has wowed me yet.
So I decided to go in a different direction. I contracted out a custom tube amplifier. The initial design was finalized this evening and now parts are being ordered. There's going to be some seriously cool new circuit features in this amp. I'm very excited to get this put together and have a listen. I have very high hopes for it.
Until the prototypes are built and we get to listen, I'll just whet your whistle with a couple design elements:
Push-Pull for ~80 watts per channel into 8 ohms
3 tubes total - one driver, two outputs - all of them being driven very conservatively for extremely long tube life
zero negative feedback
fully balanced circuit
seriously cool, truly genius auto bias - I've never heard of anyone else doing this
completely regulated power supply
amorphous core output trannies (easily the most expensive part of the whole amp)
extremely simple circuit allowing use of top shelf parts without making the overall cost of the amp too outrageous
There are some other goodies. Like I said, I'm very excited to hear this amp. It's at least a month or more away before all the parts get here and the prototypes get assembled. But I was too excited to keep quiet that long. Here's hoping it sounds half as good as I hope.... If it's total garbage, I have no one to blame but myself as I made most of the final decisions on this after hearing different options and possibilities. I'm now turning it over to the genius that knows exponentially more about these things than me to make me look good
If these turn out as well as I hope and are as easy to put together as I hope they are, this might become a commercial product so said genius can make a few bucks for the really cool things he designed into this amp.