Von Schweikert VR4JR & Tube Amp???

Pawlowski6123,

I also had my VR4jr in a 10 x 12 or 10 x 10 or something close, and first of all I feel your pain. Be careful not to over dampen the room. but I know it is necessary to absorb more than a typical room otherwise the high frequencies will blow you out of your chair. It is a balancing act. If you have the ability a diagonal speaker placement will help a lot with the bass. Anyway, I'll let others chime in on the equipment question.

Rob

Check out rives' equalizer. It's exactly what you need to kill the bass.

Newbee & Leftistelf, thanx for your thoughts. I considered your solutions but decided to go this route because 1) The worse case would be the bass problem still exists and I have a nicer sounding amp (I listen to mostly acoustic music e.g., jazz, classical, bluegrass. 2) I always heard that one "disadvantage" tubes have compared to solid state amps was that the bass was not as pronounced and 3) I thought about the equalizer but was hesitant to add something else to my signal path that might fix the bass problem but degrade the over all signal. Comments??

Bass from tube amps is often different in quality from SS amps, but not necessarily quantity. In my view the correction of the bass is far more important to the listening experience than the minor (if any) changes or distortions you might add from using a good equalizer. From a purist point of view adding an equalizer might introduce changes detectible when you do an A/B comparison, and some might hear the effect of these changes when actually listening to music, but that bass boom you will always hear and it is inappropriate and disruptive to the remaining music, for me at least.

Of course no one has asked you the degree of bass boom you are experiencing. If its on the order of 6db I wouldn't consider it a big deal - it would be something I would be albe to live with (and do). But if your are talking 12 to 15db I would find that too much. Have you actually taken a SPL meter and a test disc and checked out your room and the best available listening and speaker positions with it? If not, its worth doing.

Hi Pawlowski6123
I agree with the above posters who are advocating getting your room correct, acoustically speaking.

Try Bass traps to tame your boomy bass problem. Every room has built in sonic charastics. It's physics. Every frequency has a certain length to its sound wave. The size of your room has a direct effect on either, cancelling out certain frequencies OR accentuating certain frequencies. It all depends on the length of the wave (frequency), and the distance they are given (inside dimensions of your room) to travel.

The beauty of "bass traps" is, they will do both. That is, they will absorb a targeted frequency while redirecting (diffusing) other frequencies. I know that bass traps are expensive BUT, you can make them yourself if you would like. The link below is a description as to how to build your own.

http://www.teresaudio.com/haven/traps/traps.html

Just remember - the larger the DIAMETER of the trap, the lower the frequency that will be absorbed.

I am using 18" 16" and 9" tubes In my room. They are SYMETRICALLY placed around the room. The correction is real and not subtle.

Of course building your own traps will require some time and effort on your part. But, you will save $$$.

bets of luck in taming the boom in your room.