My first Tube Amplifier
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Do folks know that this amplifier has a slew rate so low that it can only product a few watts above 10 Khz? The power drop off starts around a few Khz and just keeps falling. Now what happens when you play trumpet music with lots of energy at 10Khz on an amp like this? The transformers are excellent, the construction is excellent but for some reason they limit the drive to the bank of output tubes by using a 12AX7 running one mA or so. |
Brooks Berdan very much liked the Music Reference amps (and he was extremely hard to please), recommending and selling them to his customers. But some of his customers wanted to spend more money (bragging rights? bling?), and Brooks didn't mind taking his 40 points out of a $10,000-$20,000 sale instead of a $2,000-$4,000 one. If more consumers carefully read John Atkinson's test bench reports they would have a much better idea what's going on under the hood of the amps that get reviewed. Amplifier sound quality is determined by many things, but just as a Pop song's ultimate quality is limited by it's chord structure and melody, an amp can not outperform the limitations imposed upon it by it's basic design. Changing the fuse in an amplifier, even if you perceive it to make a difference, is not going to improve the amp's linearity, increase it's power output, or decrease it's instability when driven into clipping. And spending more money on an amp does not necessarily buy one any of those. But you knew that ;-) . |
My first Tube amp was The Fisher 101. Far from the rig that Shkong78 started with. Unfortunately I was
oblivious to tube amplification at that time and had little appreciation for it. My journey took me into solid state for a few years after that until I fell into a Conrad Johnson MV52 with EL34's. A few years later I added a second MV52 which I Bi amped into a pair of B&W P6's. I finally added the CJ Evolution 20 soon after. That was a Tight - sweet package. Tremendous Bass response. Great Resale Value. The sad thing is that I don't even remember what ever happened to The Fisher.... |
My first tube amp was a VTL Stereo 50... great sounding amp but failed several times ... Fortunately that experience, most specifically VTL's horrible customer service, did not turn me off from tubes altogether. I've owned several great tube amps since, my current amps are Quicksilver Mid Monos and they are incredible amps for the money and Quicksilver support is top notch. |
