anyone fancy this?

http://cls.audiogon.com/cgi-bin/cls.pl?ampstube&1093225412

i have always wanted to at the very least hear on of these. a year or two ago i saw one offered for $20k, so clearly there is no hard and fast rule on pricing for these. £11,000 - £17,500 for perhaps the best tube amplifier ever made? and it's an intergrated amp, so you save the cost of a pre-amp and a set of expensive interconnects!

i think this falls under the dream amps thread....

 

I'd Take Tony Mattews Soul amps over those any day Blake

 

do you mean tom evans? yes, i'd really like to hear that too. but then you need the vibe + pulse and expensive interconnects....

 

No I mean the man who designed and built them, not T/E, besides I feel Mr Mathews has seen Mr E in his true light, I believe they are no longer partners
They are rather good though, I'd go for the 30 watter best of the bunch IMHO

 

forgive my ignorance. i had been under the misconception that it was the other way around. i thought i had read somewhere that te had a background in defence electronics and had applied that to his audio products?

 

Blake,

I'm talking about the soul amps, not the other stuff

 

i think the soul amps are a collaboration between te and tm the story i heard being that te needed some valve power amps to along with his groove and vibe pre amps. te knowing nothing about valves but a lot about psu's got together with tm who knows about valves and put together the soul.
cheers


julian

 

ok, i do recall that he did work with somebody on that who was a "tube" expert. so tell me, have you ever heard the ongaku? interesting that it is about the same power output as the 30w soul....
i knew that te had fallen out with a partner / distributor, but i hadn't realised he was supposed to be a difficult / unpleasent guy in general?

 

Hi,

I first heard one of those amps at a Bristol show in 1990 (I think). I was bowled over by it. This amp help to set me on to go down the (triode) valve path. I was using a Audio Innovations series 500 amp & had heard some Audio Innovations Triode amps but the Audio Note Ongaku seemed something else. The mid range was best I had heard. That was it's main strength. I think at the time it cost £32,000. They are all not the same. The latest ones are meant to be a different design. Prices do vary. The amp contains items such as silver wire & silver wired transformers.I have heard one since, few times, & it has never sounded as good.

You could get someone to build a amp using 211 valves that can be a killer amp for a lot less. If I was looking at spending that sort of money, I would get one designed & specially built.

The Soul power amps are hybrids, part valve part solid state using KT88 as the valve. I thought it was a Tony Matthews designed the valve part with Tom Evans doing the solid state bits.

http://www.tubedistinctions.co.uk/home2.htm


SCIDB

 

i wasn't really in the market for one now. it was just an object to lust over.
i know that some are different from others. for instance one i have seen (in a photo) had a number of tubes along the top of the front panel, where as on this one for instance there clearly aren't any. i don't know enough about it to know which are the earlier / better models, but i was also aware that they were completely hand made and so no two were exactly the same. always liked the idea of those silver wire transformers!!!!

i remeber reading that the solid state electronics / power supplies were designed to allow the tubes to work with in their operating range and to feed them with the purest dc possible

 

The Soul amps are very, very good. I was fortunate enough to audition them at Anthony Matthew's house. We used the 15 watt versions for the bass speakers and the 30 watt versions for the full-rangers.

Anthony Matthews and Tom Evans have fallen out. I was told that Tom Evans came out with some of the original concepts and Anthony Matthews did the detailed design, prototyping and arranging of construction.

Let's put it this way, if you wanted to buy a Soul amp, you'd have some hope if you spoke to Anthony Matthews but little or no possibility through Tom Evans. At least that's my understanding.

I'd love to have the Soul amps. I couldn't find anything wrong with them at all in any area, although physically they are quite substantial. Other than a certain quality of clarity and musicality (ugh, sorry) in the mid-band, you wouldn't take them for valve amps. Definitely high up in my 'dream team'.

 

32,500 !?!

Clearly in the Mark Levinson ''take the piss'' price banding scheme.

If it sells on e-bay for 32,500 I will eat WM's pants .


Note to ebay seller..
Please dont sell, for flcoks sake!!!!!!!!!!

 

Hell, he's even using the overpriced overated Transparent Ultra's a well

shock horror.....!!!!!!!!!

 

i don't know what it will go for, but i bet it will be a considerable sum... i remember hearing stories of ongakus (is that the plural??) being used for money laundering and transporting money across borders! due to their high value and apparent lack of depreciation. afterall, when have you ever seen a $40k note? think how much silver goes into the transformers alone. i'm not saying its $32k's worth, but it certainly has to be a couple of k jsut for all the silver wire.

this was the first amp i ever heard about that was really in the super fi catagory, and as such i will probably always lust after one even if it isn't as good as i was lead to believe at the time!!!

 

Come, come Chris, $32,500? That's chump change compared to what WAVAC are asking for their SH-833 monoblocks...a mere $350,000 :yikes: .

See here.

Michael.

 

Hi Blakeaudio,

Here is the latest one to lust over.



There is going to be a review of it in HIFI Choice The Collection, which is out next month. It will be £29,500 for the first 10 then it will go up to £39,000.


SCIDB

 

Hi,

Here's a better picture of those Wavacs.

http://www.wavac-audio.gr.jp/pics/SH-833.jpg

SCIDB

 

those wavac amps are really cool i remeber reading how they have sub chassis for each different part, power supply, tubes, out put transformers to isolate all the different sections. talk about overkill! but i bet they sound great. :MILD:

 

i saw this recently in some mag. it does look like it has a simialr design (based on visible tubes and layout) to the original ongaku. i guess it's just a power amp this time as opposed to an intergrated. i will look forward to reading the review....

uh... scratch that i can see the right knob is labled volume!!!

 

Its totally different, it uses some kind of triode, 6sn7 or similar to drive the 211s, via a transfomer.
Andy Grove is the designer, said to be as clever as guru Tim de Para., the original ongaku of course, was Kondo san.
Kondo fell out professionally with pytor quartrop over the idea of using push pull and feedback I believe, of course, audio note have to have their unique selling point or there is no point to them.

tbh, it seems like Audio Note do the dirty, and use others ideas, then pull the plug and start their own production of the stuff, jensen caps, kondo, all that.

The original ongaku was quite complex, it used what is termed a shunt regulated push pull input stage, into an anode follower, then a cathode follower to drive those big 211s.

The silver wire thing I think is a load of bull, as was the price, sure it had nice stuff in, but it was the case of wow, it costs £50,000, what does it sound like, well like it would with some £300 transformers, instead of inflated £5000 just for the silver. Like I have said, are you going to put every pcb track in your cd of silver, and every lead in every transistor, voltage regulator, resistor, speakers. More than a bit obsessive, methinks, however that's a personal view, and the reviewers bought it. the usual ,wow best amp we have ever heard, why, cos. its the most expensive so it must be.

Could you imagine them saying 'well we have this 50k amp for listening, and know what, its quite underwhelming, a £400 kit amp sounds as good for, oooh £49k5 less, so , nicely put together, but, weeeellll, a bit pricy for what you get' It would never happen. Joe Public want to be told how good this 50k amp is, out of this world of course.

Anyway, back to subject, Soul amps., Evans again!! its like 90% Tony Matthews and 10% Evans, and guess who gets the glory , eh? WM!!