An Exercise in Daftness.

A place for DIY project discussions.
Lurcher300b
Posts: 933
Joined: Tue Jun 14, 2016 1:58 pm
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 16 times

Re: An Exercise in Daftness.

Unread post by Lurcher300b »

It looks better now its got bits that are not attached to the board :-)

User avatar
SteveTheShadow
Posts: 1646
Joined: Thu Sep 12, 2013 5:24 pm
Has thanked: 272 times
Been thanked: 339 times
Great Britain

Re: An Exercise in Daftness.

Unread post by SteveTheShadow »

Lurcher300b wrote: Wed Dec 05, 2018 1:04 am It looks better now its got bits that are not attached to the board :-)
Aye,
Didnt take long to run out of space. That's probably an unwritten rule of breadboarding :lol:
Somebody’s telling me the latest scandals.
Somebody’s stepping on my plastic sandals. Joe Jackson (1979)

User avatar
SteveTheShadow
Posts: 1646
Joined: Thu Sep 12, 2013 5:24 pm
Has thanked: 272 times
Been thanked: 339 times
Great Britain

Re: An Exercise in Daftness.

Unread post by SteveTheShadow »

Took a break at tea time, from building a set of cupboards and shelves into the alcoves, either side of the chimney breast.
The choke is now properly wired into the input stage PSU, and shoehorned onto the edge of the board. An extra 800uF has been added to the last cap of the driver stage power supply. The ripple is now only audible with an ear to the speaker.

The 3300uF output capacitors have been bypassed with 3.3uF Mundorf Evo, silver/gold foil in oil caps (the white ones) Cost me a bleed'n fortune and they've lain idle for most of the time I've had them, so I thought "why not?"
They might as well do something useful.

Image
Somebody’s telling me the latest scandals.
Somebody’s stepping on my plastic sandals. Joe Jackson (1979)

User avatar
SteveTheShadow
Posts: 1646
Joined: Thu Sep 12, 2013 5:24 pm
Has thanked: 272 times
Been thanked: 339 times
Great Britain

Re: An Exercise in Daftness.

Unread post by SteveTheShadow »

Now listening to music on the amp. The high quality bypasses on the electrolytic output capacitors have opened out the soundstaging and cleaned the windows into the studio by a useful amount. The presentation is "just there" with every musical strand, easy to follow, all the time, with congestion when the music gets busy, conspicuous by its absence.

As an example, "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin' the opening track to Michael Jackson's ubiquitous 'Thriller' album is bristling with multitracked effects, with a wicked synth bassline, which drives along beautifully and comes over quite unlike anything I've heard from this track before. Everything is locked to that bassline with metronomic precision, PRaT and jump-factor in spades, with whipcrack dynamics, but presented with a deliciously liquid efforless quality. And Jackson's voice sounds more human than I've ever before heard it on this album. The spitty, splashy, nasty mess I had to put up with from my old Flat Earth system, on this track is completely absent and just proves what a godawful mess the Flat Earth bollocks, made of playing music.

What this amp does with voices is revelatory to my jaded old ears. Nat King Cole, Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr, Matt Monro, Petula Clark, Sandie Shaw, et al, appear between the speakers as if to sing just for you. It's so darned intimate it makes you feel quite self-conscious until you snap yourself out of it.

I love this amp. It may have efficiency figures on the low side of appalling and be hopelessly impractical on anything but high sensitivity speakers with almost resistive flat impedance characterisics, which of course, rules out 99.999% of the speakers in existence. Anything with a crossover need not apply.

For a practical OTL, you need to look, for example, at Bruce Rozenblit's Transcendent Sound offerings, but a single tube OTL, amplifier if you can get it on the right speakers, will give a musical experience that is one of, if not the best there is.


I'm just glad that Ray P (an Audio Talk Member) chose to put his 6C33C Russian Mig fighter jet valve OTL project up on there, as I would never otherwise in a million years, have thought of digging out my 13E1s. I'd have missed out on something very special.
Somebody’s telling me the latest scandals.
Somebody’s stepping on my plastic sandals. Joe Jackson (1979)

User avatar
Dr Bunsen Honeydew
Posts: 30758
Joined: Wed Jul 11, 2012 7:26 pm
Location: Muppet Labs
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 48 times

Re: An Exercise in Daftness.

Unread post by Dr Bunsen Honeydew »

How does it compare with the OTL at Owston (sorry forgot the blokes name) that sounded loverly with those Fanes.

User avatar
Dr Bunsen Honeydew
Posts: 30758
Joined: Wed Jul 11, 2012 7:26 pm
Location: Muppet Labs
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 48 times

Re: An Exercise in Daftness.

Unread post by Dr Bunsen Honeydew »

You see this is where bodgers get so much fun, I could never do this, I take a risk allowing my amps to be the way they are, shall we say not universal, can you imagine making and trying to sell something like this - impossible.

But yet again it proves the KISS principle, it is just commercially you cannot get toooo KISSY

User avatar
SteveTheShadow
Posts: 1646
Joined: Thu Sep 12, 2013 5:24 pm
Has thanked: 272 times
Been thanked: 339 times
Great Britain

Re: An Exercise in Daftness.

Unread post by SteveTheShadow »

Dr Bunsen Honeydew wrote: Fri Dec 07, 2018 1:14 am How does it compare with the OTL at Owston (sorry forgot the blokes name) that sounded loverly with those Fanes.
It's better than that. The sound is, for want of a better description, "purer" in comparison. Probably down to the single valve output rather than the multiple parallel pairs of valves the Transcendent OTL owned by Dave. There is very little in the way of the signal, with the single valve OTL. All you have is thirteen components per channel, excluding the three valves.
Somebody’s telling me the latest scandals.
Somebody’s stepping on my plastic sandals. Joe Jackson (1979)

User avatar
SteveTheShadow
Posts: 1646
Joined: Thu Sep 12, 2013 5:24 pm
Has thanked: 272 times
Been thanked: 339 times
Great Britain

Re: An Exercise in Daftness.

Unread post by SteveTheShadow »

Dr Bunsen Honeydew wrote: Fri Dec 07, 2018 1:17 am You see this is where bodgers get so much fun, I could never do this, I take a risk allowing my amps to be the way they are, shall we say not universal, can you imagine making and trying to sell something like this - impossible.

But yet again it proves the KISS principle, it is just commercially you cannot get toooo KISSY
Aye, as you say, it's great fun bodging. A lot of the time you make a "good" sounding piece of equipment but nothing truly great. But occasionally, as with the Fane speakers and this OTL I've lashed up, you do hit the jackpot.

Bodging gives you the hi-fi design experience in its rawest state and you get to realise that making a "me too" sound is relatively easy, but making a "great" sound is extraordinarily difficult. 100% of the time, the simplest solutions are the best sounding. I've disappeared up my own backside often, by adding unnecessary complexity to my amp and speaker designs.

The problem for designers such as yourself and Nick et al, is that you have to try to get your equipment into the homes of people with real world speakers, your amps have to be able to drive anything a customer puts on the end. Bodgers have no such restrictions.

The really big makers IMO make so many "me too" products they have to find another angle to sell the gear and that's where the marketing bullshit comes in big style.
Somebody’s telling me the latest scandals.
Somebody’s stepping on my plastic sandals. Joe Jackson (1979)

User avatar
Dr Bunsen Honeydew
Posts: 30758
Joined: Wed Jul 11, 2012 7:26 pm
Location: Muppet Labs
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 48 times

Re: An Exercise in Daftness.

Unread post by Dr Bunsen Honeydew »

The glory of capitalism, a different mind set is to work to artisan principles, that is the way I want to be. All over the world the artisan was the way pre the creation of British / USA Capitalism that came in with the industrial revolution. China, India, etc beautiful and functional *things*, mostly done in a patronage way, often as a servant, so that is not such a good thing, that created exploitation, but capitalism just creates a different form of exploitation.

Lurcher300b
Posts: 933
Joined: Tue Jun 14, 2016 1:58 pm
Has thanked: 0
Been thanked: 16 times

Re: An Exercise in Daftness.

Unread post by Lurcher300b »

I think Fettler is a closer description than Bodger.

Post Reply