antique sound 1009

Great amps. I regret selling them from time to time. It drove Avalon Diamonds and Quad ESL well. I did not have maintenance problem and they sounded great with Shuguang 845B and 845M. Very good texture and a lot of inner detail. It bettered Audio Research and Rogue amps that I had. I did not think they give up much comparing to Nagra VPA. I tried many tubes and ended up with Ei EL34 and Bugleboy 12AU7.

Nutella
I read Salvatore's review. Parts have to be changed to get them up to speed(The dealer installed Jensens in his 1006's). There's a company that does this to the tune of $1800. As I said before, biasing was a no-no for me as one amp would constantly drift. I guess I'll never own Joules to experience the Variac.

I've purchased 2 pairs of new ASL poweramps the last couple years. The Explorer 805s and Hurricanes were and are reliable and sound great. Having just built a high-sensitivity speaker system and not needing 120 Watts of triode power, I've ordered another pair, the 25-Watt SET AQ1006, in the new, taller version.

The 1009 is all triode (the EL34 drivers are wired as triodes), push-pull of course, uses fairly conventional design concepts, is mostly hardwired (ie does not use printed-circuit boards for audio circuitry), and uses tubes (12AU7s, EL34s, and Shuguang/ValveArt 845s) that are highly available and affordable. It also has separate low- and high-Voltage power transformers and powersupplies and uses NO negative feedback. If 60 Watts is enough power for you and the concept of push-pull amplification doesn't bother you*, go for them.
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* Some of us nutty fans of triode amplification also 'need' our amps to be single-ended.
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Tab, the later version of these amps have the caps that are recommended. One could install expensive V-caps and get most of the benefit of the 1800 mod for $400 in parts.
WRT the biasing issue, mine stayed steady the whole time I had them. I checked regularly and never had to adjust. A friend had the older version and did experience issues with the bias.
Great amps but like Jeffrey, I ended going the SET route.

On the subject of the ASL gear, I can understand the comments about the bias drift on earlier models but have not had this issue on piece current with the last 2 or 3 years.
I have a pair of the horizontal 1009's (before the Cadenza design) and the EL34's were replaced with KT66 tubes. These amps do belong to a customer for whom I am selling them for on consignment but have set them up for testing and some listening.
None of the ASL gear is a knock-off product and I have found them to be an extremely reputable line. hey are also a tweaker's delight. Is there others out there that better it? Sure, there always is but I think you will have a hard time finding equals at the same price point.