Posted by manualblock [ 69.112.69.86 ] on July 05, 2005 at 10:37:10:

In Reply to: Re: Hum posted by Forty2wo on July 02, 2005 at 18:20:43:

For the price they are a good thing. I have slapped together a couple for freinds and they are very happy; but it is true, they don't have any kind of magic. Smooth and clear but uninspireing.
I started to build them because they were cheap and helped me to learn construction techniques; as well as offering an opportunity to see first-hand how changing caps and resistors affected the sound.
After a long journey here and elsewhere sampling many amps/tweaks/mods etc. I think I have come full circle. The older Loftin-white/WE 91/Mullard etc. tube amps are the amps that do music best.
The arguments that chase their tail about rolled off extremes and harmonic distortion are utterley useless in describing music and sound.
Most of the people who stand behind the spec group are mostly listening to highly processed reproduced CD's and Vinyl and as such cannot enjoy real tone and life in the equipment because it reveals this badly engineered sound. Good older tube based recordings are the only way to understand sound; and they don't do well on flat/etched/hyper-revealing equipment.
Thats why I dropped the SS experimentation for now.

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