Futterman. Jump in? Or, not so fast...


Today I heard a Futterman OTL powering a pair of Quad ESL57s. The Futterman has been recently serviced and is in nice shape. It sounded wonderful. I understand this is a rare beast.

I've been advised a set of tubes can last 10,000 hours. But these are not common tubes and they need to be closely matched, an their are 12 of them. If I were to buy this amp I'd immediately start worrying about putting together a backup set of spares, which could run into quite a bit of money.

So - Futterman owners - what say ye?  Jump on the chance to own a legend? Or stick with my "set and forget" Quad 909 powering my ESL 2805s...
128x128markusthenaimnut
Eric,
Thanks for the esoteric and informative news on NYAL. How do you know all this stuff? I’m wondering if Doug at Audio Specialties can fix it (provided I can get my brother to ship it to me from Chicago). Is it worth the cost?

Keith
@markusthenaimnut - you can email us at tubeaudiostore@gmail.com and provide us with the relevant information. If your amp uses the 6FL6 we have plenty. We have some of the PL tubes as well.

Of the two H3s we bought, one was made by Harvard and the other by Tech Electronics. Both were much more reliable than the NYAL version. If you go back to some of Futterman’s published schematics in engineering journals you will note that they were of low power design. Futterman got caught up in the power game when the H3 was designed and it’s no coincidence that reliability issues started popping up with the increase in power. Roger’s design will be in the neighborhood of 40 watts pentode/25 watts triode.

@tomic601 - Yes Roger was UVA undergraduate, then a year at Stanford. While your offer is appreciated, Roger became dismayed at what they were teaching at UVA these days and also became disenchanted that the young engineers to be were not interested in audio circuit design. As such he decided not to donate to any academic institutions. He instead has made other plans for his journals, recorded interviews (including Saul Marantz and Futterman among others), rare and exotic tubes, antique electronics, and intellectual property.

@ndevamp - yes your help would be appreciated, I will email you to discuss.
Post removed 
Harvey worked with Mr. Futterman before the latters passing, and bought the rights to the Futterman name and OTL design shortly before that came to pass.
One of the reasons the NYAL amps were unreliable was Harvey used surplus photoflash capacitors in his power supplies. They were rated 600uf @360V; about an inch in diameter and about 5" long. These parts were not suited for power supply duty as they didn't survive ripple current very well. So even if they were new when installed they would not have been reliable. If you see these parts in an NYAL amp they all need replacement.