Hi @jond,
Until I lived with Lynn Olson’s personal Karna amplifiers (http://www.nutshellhifi.com/triode2.html) while he was getting settled into his new house here in Colorado in 2005, much of this lush vs. quick 300B stereotype was theory. Yes, I’d heard 300B amps that were more or less incisive, but they still fell within a range that I’d refer to as a "normal" characterization of a 300B.
The material on Lynn's page is a bit dated, as the Ariel speakers are about to receive an upgrade to a horn system he's been designing over the past few years, but the basic amplifier design principles hold true to this day.
Of course, Lynn’s amplifiers are push-pull 300Bs (so this isn’t an apples to apples comparison with anything else), but he used all of the power supply tricks I’m using, and of equal importance is that his driver tube is a 45 (Sakuma/direct heating again - output tube driving output tube).
The Karnas' sound more like powerful single ended amps than push-pull, which plays into my theory that the better various architectures are designed and implemented, the more convergence there is between them.
Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier Design
Until I lived with Lynn Olson’s personal Karna amplifiers (http://www.nutshellhifi.com/triode2.html) while he was getting settled into his new house here in Colorado in 2005, much of this lush vs. quick 300B stereotype was theory. Yes, I’d heard 300B amps that were more or less incisive, but they still fell within a range that I’d refer to as a "normal" characterization of a 300B.
The material on Lynn's page is a bit dated, as the Ariel speakers are about to receive an upgrade to a horn system he's been designing over the past few years, but the basic amplifier design principles hold true to this day.
Of course, Lynn’s amplifiers are push-pull 300Bs (so this isn’t an apples to apples comparison with anything else), but he used all of the power supply tricks I’m using, and of equal importance is that his driver tube is a 45 (Sakuma/direct heating again - output tube driving output tube).
The Karnas' sound more like powerful single ended amps than push-pull, which plays into my theory that the better various architectures are designed and implemented, the more convergence there is between them.
Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier Design