TRL ST225 - Goodness anyone else own this amp

I am glad to hear that you discover this special gem. I have an opportunity to hear ST225 at a friend's in Philly driving a 3-way with a pair of 15" woofer. With Paul's expertise in design and manufacturing top tier tube gears, I think he manages to harness the 'tube' warmth and magic into a transistor design so that we can rip the benefits from both worlds coming in a SS box. I have been thoroughly enjoying my TRL mono's and have not being even tempted by any amp upgraditis as yet. I look forward to your review.

Howard

Based upon my recollection of conversations with Paul, I don't think the amps have fuses in them, but circuit breaker switch only. Besides the full spectrum tonal balance Bill experienced, one among other things that impressed me is the "density" of the sound "images" in the stage that the amp is capable of casting. I am lucky to hear some very good setups of a few top amps (i.e. Gryphon, Jadis, Goldmund, ASR, Halcro, DartZeel, Kondo, etc) at various friends' dwellings. Personally, my TRL amps have never disappointed. For people seeking truthful, distortion-free, grain-free reproduction of music, IMHO TRL amps should definitely be on the short audition list before purchased.

Just pulled a past email from Paul about never using fuses in his own designs, but circuit-breaker switches for the reason yielding much better sound. FYI, here is the spec I have collected about the amp:

Input Impedance: 68kohms
Input Sensitivity: 1.1Vrms
THD: < 0.05%
Gain: 30db
Noise Floor: < -100db
Rail Voltage: +/- 76 VDC
Power: 225 watts
Power consumption: 600 watts

An excellent tube circuit design would yield the liveliness, sound stage, layering, and ambient decaying that many ss designs still come short of. In contrast, an excellent ss design has bass extension, impact, dynamic, and transient attacks that many tube can't quite match. That's why I have been preferring the ss amp and tube pre combo. The ss amp design gives me the luxury of having it turned on 24x7 and not worrying inability to drive difficult-load speakers. Because of TRL extreme low noise-floor, grain-free nature, it makes matching higher sensitive speakers possible also (heard ST-225 with 90+ db speakers before). The tube rolling at pre gives me that flexibility of adding a touch of warmth and improve liveliness without sacrificing (much) neutrality and full spectrum balance. I have no complaint but prasie for my TRL monos. The high gain amp design makes finding a matching pre a bit tougher. However, that's the inconvenience I am willing to go through considering the musical fulfillment the amps have brought for thus far. :)

Terryn: I think the battery PS takes it up to a different league. I won't hesitate if I could do it over again. The batteries used are the seal, deep-cycled ones. Since my mono's are customized units, they come in as a 4-piece configuration. However, I don't think this is standard. If memory serves me right, Jack's battery chassis comes in 24" x 12" x 12" military metal ammo case. Users have the freedom to use the amps with and without the battery. With the battery turns on, the noise-level drops further, the soundstage expands, the weight and the "density" of the sound images improves, everything just gets taken up a couple notches or more. It is not as much as an arch-welder like GT-800; luckily none of my speakers runs around 1 ohm, so I don't need it. Sonic-wise I believe it is the best that Paul has to offer (for now). :)

Howard