tubes and analog

Here is the post that some of you have been waiting for...
Raul did indeed audition Atma-Sphere gear at my home during his latest "American Tour", discussed elsewhere.

Raul did witness a tube failure in one of my MA1 amps; two tubes went down. Unfortunately for me, the amps were purchased second-hand and came with improper 6 1/4amp fuses instead of the recommended 5amp fuses. Additionally, a few of the tubes in the amp were old Ebay-purchased RCAs vs. the recommended Russian 6AS7s. The bad fuses allowed a DC surge to take down a woofer.

I've since replaced the woofer, the fuses, and the two bad tubes. In the interim, one other output tube failed(remember that this is a Mark 2.II amp a number of years old). The proper fuses worked correctly, and no speaker or amp damage occurred.
Therefore, the comment, "The amp blew up", or "the amp damaged the speaker" is a distortion of the true cause.
Given that Raul left town before I discovered the wrong fuses were in the amps, it's hard to blame him for concluding what he did, however I felt it necessary to clarify in Atma-Sphere's defense. As I type, I'm happily listening to Rob Wasserman's blistering bass work through my happy Atma-Sphere amps.
Perhaps we can all get back to the music now...Cheers,
Spencer

Seems like this thread really got off track. I hope the original poster got something out of it. I have but not from the original question. Its been fun.

Carl

So basically Raul misrepresented the entire episode or at the very least posted
sketchy info that he had not verified. This seems to be a pattern. How can we possibly take Raul's comments as true in any of his posts?
Claiming an Atma blew up and damaged a speaker when it did not is unforgivable IMHO.

The Atma did blow up the woofer. Problem is/was the Atma was not to spec. as per factory. One needs to make sure about used equipment if one wants to keep the surprise's count down. Even then there can be a surprise waiting. Put yourself in the others shoes.
"smoke comes out of a device and then the second device poofs...must be the first device causing the problem." And in this case its reported as what happen by both parties. Its not even an assumption, just an underlying problem. We all need to be careful.
Not defending anyone, just an observation. Peace

One of the biggest fears a manufacturer has is that of a used piece of their gear appearing on the market after having been improperly modded.

I've become quite friendly with Mike Sanders of Quicksilver Audio.

Mike is one of the quintissential examples of bullet-proof designs in terms of stability and reliability.

Some of the Quickies he sees returned to him for "minor repair" are not to be believed.

He finds so much unauthorized work having been done on his gear to "improve" it, that the poor unsuspecting purchaser is faced with seeing more work being required to rip out the guts and start from scratch than what would be involved in starting from a bare chassis.

Cheers,
Thom @ Galibier