My humble opinion; There are only a limited no. of individuals willing to take the incredible amount of time and effort to excell at this hobby and those individuals realise that there is a lifetime of learning involved; are not easily fooled; tend to know when the sound is good and vice-versa; to not slavishly cleave onto every new fad; and are careful with their money. So that is a difficult audience upon which to make a living and you have my sympathy as well as a sincere gratitude for your dedication. please do not allow a souring of opinion to infect your efforts.

Because IMO too many guys go chasing after certain NOS because they were told to go after it, not because they can actually hear any difference...seen this happen in listening tests. And besides, those types are driving the supplies down and prices up by using up the things they are told to buy (again, not always the best for the job). In some circuits a cheap Sovtek works amazingly well. Most modern guitar amps were designed especially to work well with available new tubes, not NOS. But snobbery often takes over and denies it.

It's not consistent snobbery either. I've seen two "experts" argue about which EF86 is the best, almost to the point of violence. There have been endless wars on rec.audio.tubes and alt.guitar.amps started over which obscure hard-to-find 12AX7 one should pay inflated prices for....that's the worst part, when you have egomaniacs telling people what to buy. And disagreeing. Again, this is so much like the wine-tasting "business" that it's depressing to me. Or like the childish wars people get into over role-playing games.

>BTW does anyone really take Tellig seriously?

You'd be really surprised. He has a huge fan following. I have met otherwise reasonably intelligent, well-educated men who talk about Tellig the way some teenage girls talk about Justin Timberlake. And some of the stuff he raves about is just crap IMO. Again, lack of critical thinking is how this crap starts. We end up with $50,000 speakers that are awful sounding, being built up into big sellers. (And once-common WWII 6SN7s selling for $250, almost overnight.)

Also is it true you don't favor interstage transformer coupling? I may have that wrong, if so I apologise for the error. J.R.

I have in fact heard several very pricey speakers that I found to be sterile and lacking in musicality. To be frank I thought they sounded like crapola. At the risk of sounding looney the sound seems to me to be etched in glass, if that makes any sense.

I have read Tellig again after you mentioned him, correct me if I am wrong but I have read several essays written many yrs. ago by Herb Reichert. In those essays he uses several signature phrases such as Where he talks about speakers that have been around for 20 yrs. or more in mostly unchanged configuration. Tellig seems to have adopted some of those concepts and phrases. I f we go back to those old essays we can see much that is similar. I don't know; maybe it's me.J.R.

Not surprised. "Sam" (not his real name) has been reading SOUND PRACTICES and LISTENER, and he's also been badgered repeatedly by the NYC triode mafia. So it's not surprising that he's starting to ape them. The NY audiophile scene is one of the most trend-obsessed I've ever seen. They might as well be writing for VOGUE or WWD.

>At the risk of sounding looney the sound seems to me to be etched in glass

That's quite typical of audiophile equipment. It's not unusual for such products to deliberately have uptilted HF response. Speakers and especially high-priced moving coil cartridges are notorious for this. It's deliberate--the makers know that their middle-aged male customers are suffering from high-frequency hearing loss, so they cater to them. One of the worst examples I EVER heard was the Hovland exhibit at the 1999 CES. Drove me out of the room. A year later, their setup sounded totally different. Guess someone complained.

>is it true you don't favor interstage transformer coupling?

Where'd you get that idea? If you can get good interstage transformers, they can work miracles, esp. in amps using low mu triodes.
Good luck finding good ones, bub. Without paying insulting prices for old ones, that is. Your best bet might be to talk Dennis Hoyer into making something for you--he's a treasure trove of otherwise-forgotten winding tricks.

I still would be interested to know what criteria would influence the change of a design from one brand of say el84's to another brand.

Wayne mentions Rosenberg, he was mildly entertaining at times but his attempts at humor tend to wear thin quickly.

I think now; upon remmembering carefully, that I might have assumed the interstage transformer statement due to an earlier post you made concerning Sakuma's designs and how weak they sounded. His schtick is all transformer coupling so I put two and two together. Bad idea.

Where can we read up on your little portable amp? I used to carry an auto amp with a 110/12 volt converter and two minimus 7's as a portable system, it would be nice to have a portable tube unit for outdoors. J.R.(Thanks for the heads up on the interstage transformer winding guy) It would be nice to see some dialogue on that very subject.

Because I have a lot of work to do, and this is a very complex subject (and I have no idea how much electronics education you have), I'd prefer not to go into a lot of detail about this.
I can give you a few pointers: 1) modern tubes have more distortion than NOS (in general). So more feedback is helpful in making current tubes sound their best. It's usually not a big change. 2) More plate current produces better linearity. However, one then has to run lower voltage to keep dissipation in the rated area. This is necessary anyway because modern tubes usually don't have very hard vacuum or the best materials. 3) esp. in guitar amps, adjusting or adding EQ can SOMEWHAT compensate for the poorer cathode materials in modern tubes. This is a MASSIVE area of study, one that nobody will ever write a textbook about because guitar amp mfrs. are notoriously secretive about their "magic formulae". Competition in that business is VERY cutthroat.

>Where can we read up on your little portable amp?

Do you mean the Metasonix TM-4? Nowhere that I know of. No publication has ever reviewed it. Sales have been very low. If this keeps up I'm tempted to either change it completely or drop it.
If you want to try it, I might be willing to discuss a temporary loan of the last one left in stock. You could always review it for some website, like enjoythemusic.com or 6moons.com. Email me. (synth@metasonix.com)

I'd like to know more about this amp. For the last month or two, I've been thinkin' that an amp of your design would be cool, and lo and behold, here it is. Seems like if people know about it, there would probably be a great deal of interest. With all the folks around here and their collective specialties, you have excellent resources available if you ned anything like chassis to round-out a kit and/or finished product. Seems like a neat deal, and I'd like to see it happen.

Wayne