Single ended valve poweramp

Hicam have got a Threshold s300 for £800. It's been reincarnated as the Usher A class amp (£1500), which Davewhityetagain on wigwam seems to be very pleased with. Ignore the fact they reckon it's £4000 new as the list price was $2000 in the US, so a bit of haggling might be on.

 

If you're talking about valve amps tenson, I'd think the answer to be 'no'.

The problem being ''SET'' and ''30w''.

Hard figures to marry at any price, nevermind £800.

 

Tenson, with regard to priorities, if you're thinking about exploring SET's, you'd better prepare to invest in something larger and much more sensitive than PMC monitors!!

And as bottleneck said - you'd be looking at 25wpc max from an SET. Your budget limits you to Chinese equipment (i.e. Ming-da transmitter amps like the 211/805/845 offerings).

300B SET's usually have 8-12wpc. You'll need some seriously efficient speakers to use these though.

Question is though, do you really want 100-litre cabs in your lounge?

DT

 

Would you need that much just to drive the tweeters?

Jeff

 

Tenson - I'm surprised!! Have you had a recent experience to steer you away from the active PMC's?

There appears to be a couple of Class A options on the cattylink site for that kind of money, they're of interest to me.

Have you specific speakers in mind?
G

 

I think Simon had a few ear opening sessions at the show or maybe Thorsen has got to him at an early age

 

10-15 wpc will drive 89dB perfectly happily its just a matter of matching- you need a nice impedance load. Plenty of monitors that will do it, no need at all for 100 litre cabs. If I had £1K I'd go with something like the Loftin White 2A3 kit from Bluebell (about 3-4wpc) then build some open baffles or something which should be around 98dB. Loftin White is a lovely amp, music music and more music. Or a 211 something or other, your spoilt for choice at that price with the chinese ones. Also 845 but I prefer 211, not as dark sounding. You'll maybe get 20W ish but more realistically 15, depends on quality really. Alot of the chinese ones benefit from some fiddling out of the box but you've got plenty of cash for that. Lots on the world designs site about that sort of thing. To get 30W+ your looking at some seriously scary tubes (gm100) and seriously scary voltages to boot which just aren't practical to use.

 

Simon,
Steve's speakers give a sound that he's engineered into them.
They will never be a pa rig, however they make some pleasing in an unfussed and very musical & UNFATUGING way.
WE really needed the 30wpc Soul power amp to help with the lack of headroom.
The Coherent Systems room at Bristol will demostrate on what is Truely possible with redbook, nothing at the Manchester show came close In OUR Opinion.
But I have to say we did enjoy oursleves and the people were actually REAL music lovers for the most part. T.

 

When using different amps for bi-amping as you are suggestion be aware of the different gain each amp may have, the input sensitivity, the input impedence and also the phase coherence between them. You could seriously screw up the 'speaker balance if you don't get these correct.

 

Hi Simon,

You really don't need anything like 30w to drive tweeters under domestic conditions. To give you some idea, my 40w class A tube amp never gets above 1w full range into 96db horns in my room - and 1w is bloody loud!

In fact 5-10w should be more than ample so if you want to try tubes there are plenty of options. I personally feel that over complicating amplification and mixing different topologies is not the way to go, but the journey can be fun

Rob.