My treasure: "Tube amp making course" Extra Vol. By Otomeijin (Oct. 21, 2005) |
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We were able to hold a "Tryout Gathering?" as scheduled at Hi-Fi Do Akihabara Store thanks to Ms. Ninomiya, Manager Kawai and Mr. Hisaeda. I do appreciate their support. As I told you before, I have been listening to music on multiple amps at hand, so I do not necessarily know the feature of audio equipment of each maker. As I always try to reproduce the sound that is as similar to its original acoustic sound in my memory as possible, I tried out my handmade amp also based on such standard. 1. Tryout of my amp with the Altec 612 speaker As this speaker has such a high efficiency of 102dB, I had expected conspicuous hum. But I did not notice such hum because it was tried out at the store. If it had been at home, I would have noticed a little bit of hum, listening at a place 2m away from the speaker, although, of course, the hum would not have been to such an extent as overwhelming the music itself. When I listened on this speaker at the store, the low range sound was distorted (as I had listened at home). So I put soft gum acoustic insulators at hand underneath the amp, and the low range sound became wider and a little lower. This is a magic amp whose sound becomes stable with soft or hard insulators attached. The amp has only simple, ordinary gum legs of an old type despite its high price, so take into consideration using insulators. The tones were rough at cross with horns, and high range sound did not expand without sensitiveness. This seemed to be a feature of this speaker, which was suitable for listening to jazz with the conspicuous vocal sound. 2. Tryout of my amp with the Spendor BC2 With this speaker, the tones were those said to be European tones, and bright and open but sustaining. I felt it sounding musically. The low range sound was soft and a little fuzzy. The string sound was reproduced with reality. When we listened to the flute quartet by Mozart, an amateur cellist, who was incidentally at the store, highly praised the sound. 3. Sonus Faber Amati Homage soudspeaker It was great to be able to listen to music using this speaker. We could have never listened on the speaker at any place other than Hi-Fi Do. The speaker was outstanding enough to deserve to have the name "Amati", who had been a great violin maker in Cremona, Italy, and who had been the master of Stradivari. Cremona has been historically famous for violin making. The varnish (or clear lacquer in fact?) of the body looked wonderful as if it were a string instrument. The sound was so wide, quiet and restrained that I wondered if it really was an Italian speaker. The mid and high range sound was rather like that of a German or Japanese speaker and was not so bright as that of the Spendor speaker. However, the low range sound was excellent despite its woofer size. The sound was clear like in the scale and was modern, while the body let us feel at ease in its classical appearance. So I wish it were (much) less expensive. * Comment on my handmade "amp" This week's column is not on speakers but on how my amp would make sound. On the whole, I think that this amp sound was ideal being not so conspicuous as to overwhelm the speaker sound and not too strong as if to say "This is my sound." As we repeatedly listened on this audio set, the sound was excellently expressive. That means this amp in the set was excellent. The fact that the amp sound was not conspicuous (not hard, noisy or loose) means it satisfied the most important requirements for an amp. These are my comments on the tryout of my amp. The result of this tryout fortunately came out just as I had expected when I had tried out this amp with my flat coaxial speaker at home beforehand. There will be another report on this tryout by the Hi-Fi Do staff. Please give priority to that report. My comment on the amp might not be strict enough because it was an amp I had handcrafted myself, even if it was now at hand of the Hi-Fi Do staff. After all, I think I made an excellent amp and it is a pity that I have to put it under someone else's hands. |
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