Pure Class A amps above 100 Watts?

Haha, George, what a trip! Thanks for sharing that information. 

Do you have any pictures of that water cooled amp? Nothing succeeds like excess. I owned a Mac computer that was water/liquid cooled. It weighed a ton. How much did your amp weigh?

I guess you wouldn’t want your water cooling system to spring a leak, would you? I’m terrified of anybody approaching my Colosseum with a drink in their hand, a fear shared by my friend who runs the Mephisto Solo mono blocks.

By the way, my Gryphon Colosseum
seems to be running fine off of a Niagara 5000. I decided I needed some protection from power surges. My friend with the Mephisto solos is running each on a 5000 and he decided he didn’t need a third 5000 so he sold it to me.

larrykell

Do you have any pictures of that water cooled amp? Nothing succeeds like excess. I owned a Mac computer that was water/liquid cooled. It weighed a ton. How much did your amp weigh?

OK you asked for it, believe it or not time.

Sorry no pics, young and stupid back then, all I wanted was was biggest Class-A I could make using water as cooling, after I built and heard Nelson Pass A20 http://www.firstwatt.com/pdf/art_classa_20.pdf also they were film cameras back then and no internet so pics were a hassle.

It weighed a lot, and was a two man lift in the order of 100kg, that power supply fed some for memory 36x Hirel EB and ED 204 bjt transistors 20amp 200w 200mhz each, one of the best transistors eve made, no longer available.

The amp was on a naked platform 1mt X 1/2mt, which had a machined water cooling jacket which all those hirel’s bolted to the outlet hose went to the top of a small car radiator, the bottom hose of the radiator went to a very quiet pump which then went to the inlet of the water cooling jacket. I had a Garard turntable motor with a Davis Craig plastic fan on it turning at 33 rpm to blow air through the radiator.
The whole thing after 10 years started to corroded, I very rich businessman offered me a fortune for it as a resto project and I sold it to him, he may still have it, but I doubt it, even the 1/2 farad of caps were on the way out.

I was a trip making it a showing it off, one of the times it powered Otto Majors system (rip) Quad 57 restorer extraordinaire even better than original.
He had double stacked quad 57’s with Decca Kelly ribbons from 10khz up, and from 100hz down two 24" Hartly woofers in the wall where the room behind it was the speaker box.
Front end was a Linn of course with an Infinity Black Widow arm and a Stax Electrostatic!!!! best ever sounding cartridge, going into it’s own power supply and riaa, which then went into my Lightspeed Attenuator MkI passive and into the water cooled beast! What a sound, remember the Dire Straits album "Love Over Gold" very well it was holographic!!.

http://mniec.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/hqdusa_resize.jpg?w=594&h=413

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ff/28/0e/ff280e10ff8268ed43348aa59b805d2a.jpg

https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7479/16018366265_aeda7012db_b.jpg

https://www.vinylengine.com/turntable_forum/viewtopic.php?t=23803

Cheers George

Hello George,

  Thanks for putting my rather modest efforts in perspective, haha! 

  We need the audio equivalent of Jay Leno’s Garage, where we could all wander around a big warehouse space and look at sound systems from various eras.

  As for sound, my proudest moment was when I tricked an electrician into thinking I was playing the cello. The electrician was working in my kitchen and I put on Pablo Casals playing the Bach Cello Suites, in the living room. I went off into the bedroom to work on the computer. Later, the electrician told me he went out into the living room expecting to see me there playing the cello, lol.

  I had my classical guitar teacher sit down and listen to the stereo. He kept pointing at the big Gryphon and asking if that was the third speaker. Haha. 

  

  
  

Been Solid State boy close to 15 Years, before that it was tubes.

Now I'm back to Tubes but using OTL Atma-Sphere Amplifiers. It does what the Solid States can but also all the goodness of Tubes.

So my Recommendation at min the M60 but you should aim for the Atma-Sphere MA1, Plenty of Power, Purity, Smoothness, Musical Presentation, Fatigue Free Listening, Emotional Impact, Speed, Dynamics, Clarity and above all Satisfaction. 

The Solid State put me on the merry go round, the Atma-Sphere took me off it. Iv had a bunch of SET amplifiers & Push and Pull. Over time I always go back to my OTL Amps.