Posted by Wayne Parham [ 65.69.121.77 ] on February 14, 2005 at 17:10:41:
In Reply to: Re: Still a bit of a generalization, but... posted by Damir on February 14, 2005 at 16:18:30:
I agree with that too. Push-pull designs have more parts, so if all of them are expensive then that will be double the cost of a SET amp using the same parts. You've got a pair of output tubes and a splitter, more stuff. But some of the parts in a push-pull amp can be made smaller for the same power level as a comparible SET amplifier. Single-ended tube amps need bigger tubes and output transformers to get the same power.
I am confident that if you remove budget constraints, you can make any of the popular topologies sound good. But if you make price/performance the goal, I think SET starts losing ground.
That may be why the budget models are probably better off push-pull. Whatever the case, the low end SET stuff just doesn't appeal to me. More expensive SET amps sure do though.