Thank you, @mulveling ! I have printed that as well.
You asked for a diagram, @emergingsoul , it appears as if your wish has been granted a couple of times over.
I hate to say it, but now I think maybe I like my amp in ultralinear mode versus triode
It's a Cary V-12; it features a dozen EL34s and each pair has a switch in between them that configures that pair to either triode or ultralinear. In full triode Cary listed in the specs that it makes 50 wpc and in full ultralinear 100 wpc. For most of the twenty three years that I have owned this amp I have always felt that I preferred triode except for the occasions that I wanted to full out blast (it has literally been many years since I've felt the need to full out blast).
However, today I experimented with a couple of things in my system, and after listening to the same "Jazz Essentials" (compilation) red book CD a couple of times all the way through, the next thing I experimented with was switching to full ultralinear.
Maybe there was more "PRaT"? (Which is a term I am still not sure that I completely grasp.) Maybe . . . but what I do feel I noted for sure was that the imaging (particularly the imaging in the center) had more weight (meatier?) and was presented more forward, which I actually like.
I put a few more hours in (one more time with Jazz Essentials, Holly Cole/It Happened One Night, Dave's True Story/Sex Without Bodies, selected tracks from Rebecca Pigeon/The Raven and Once Blue/self titled and Norah Jones/Feels Like Home) after switching to ultralinear. (No booze during this session, just coffee.) The jury is still out on this, but I do have some CDs in mind that I want to listen to over the next few days as I continue to evaluate.
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@viridian , going on about 25 years ago I was buying some 12AU7s and 6922s for a preamp and amp I had, from Andy from Michigan. I probably made two or three phone calls to get the deal done, but in the course of those calls and conversations, Andy got off the topic of the tubes he was selling me and got to talking about a push pull amp he had recently restored or built (I wish I could still remember his exact words) but it was just a massive amount of class A wpc and when he said something about ". . . liquid fire coming out of the . . ." his tone of voice was almost orgasmic. Your post made me think of that. |
Yes, @viridian , that was the Andy I was referring to. I enjoyed talking to him. Somehow he got on the subject of amps and the people who designed those amps that he didn’t care for. I won’t mention the names, but as we were talking about the amp, I said (and I do remember this word for word), "well, with the ____ I guess you get a lot of bang for the buck," and he replied with this kind of crazy laugh, "Hoo hoo hoo, or some times just a lot of bang!" And I remember him laughing some more. I don’t know why my memory for certain detail that doesn’t really benefit me in any way is so good, there are subjects that if I could have remembered them as well actually would have done me some good. |
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