I have a Dennis Had built Inspire Fire Bottle with EML 45 tubes and a Had LP3.1 preamp pushing my Klipsch Forte II's. Barely 2 watts, but man do those Forte's sing. I have another system with a Reisong A-10 EL34 that is around 12 total watts, and it gets my Polk Audio Monitor 10's as loud and crisp as I need. Sometimes less is more.
1-1/2 Watts?
A friend came over yesterday and brought a beautiful boutique 45 tube amp with only 1-1/2 watts, which was really built for 100+DB speakers. We hooked it up to my Audio Note AN-Ks, which are rated at 90 DB, just to see what would happen. I have a 1 Bedroom and sit about 8’ from the speakers, which are on the long wall and not in corners. I have to say, the amp drove the speakers much better than we both expected, even on tracks with a lot of bass like Eryika Badu. Not very loud, of course, but adequate for apartment listening. I wouldn’t say it was a perfect match, but the results surprised us both. It was an interesting experience.
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Much of the time I use an Elekit TU-8900 (with Lundahls etc.) RCA Black Plate 2A3s and Brimar input stages. Speakers are 87dB Rockport Atria IIs - that amp does what I need, beautifully - except if I am going to have an extended Mahler session when I step up to an XA25 - which is 50wpc into 4 ohms. 2.83 v (2 watts) at the speaker gives me 83dB in my listening position. I am in the process of building a 300B SE circuit, with two 300Bs per side - in a configuration that I think can be called series. Each output tube uses 1/2 of the primary so its like a PP but each half is in the same phase. The OPT is gapped for 80ma. The hope is that I get the SE magic with a bit more power - the current is limited to 80 ma so the primary inductance of the OPT can be kept high for bass response. Running parallel at160 ma would require a bigger air gap in the OPT - losing bass response. I am hoping this will allow the big stuff to sing but keep the low power SE sound.
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@pafdenver , Tube output compared to SS output is apples to oranges. It’s a whole different world. I grew up with Dynaco my first being the SCA-35 integrated. It drove by JBL-L16’s just fine. But back to the thread , I too have a Had Inspire that was stated to produce 12 wpc per Dennis. What I found with that little amp was by dropping the voltage using a lower value rectifier tube even with KT-120 and KT-150 power tubes it produced less wattage but had huge bass dynamics. My favorite was using vintage GEC KT-66 , a Tekefunken driver tube and the lowest power nos rectifier tube I had. I’m guessing that it is about 6-7 wpc. The sound is sublime and it was still fairly powerful. To the OP at 1 1/2 watts with the more exotic power tubes mentioned it is ABSOLUTELY AMAZING how good a couple watts sound. When I was a small child my grandfather had a low power tube system with 15” EV coaxial drivers in exotic mahogany cabinets. He’d play the old standards like Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin ect. Then he’d put on something like Spanish Eyes and the room was filled with sound and emotion. I guess you just have to experience it to understand. For me it’s something that SS never could do. Thanks for triggering some pleasant memories. Respectfully, Mike B. |
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