"Keith G" wrote in message
...

"Trevor Wilson" wrote in message
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"Keith G" wrote in message
...

"Trevor Wilson" wrote in message
...

"max graff" wrote in message
oups.com...
Hi guys,

I am planning on building my own valve amp and need a starting point
viz. books, forums etc. Any tips would be of good help.

**Just listen to a bunch of amps in your price range. Buy or build the
one you like. Just for yuks, see if you can organise a blind test of
the amps. That orta sort out the dodgy ones. For valve amps, unless you
build it PRECISELY the way you hear it (same valves, same output
transformers, etc) you will be wasting your time.


More totally stupid *advice* from Trevor...

**Not at all. We do things a little differently in this part of the
world. We don't marry a woman without tasting the cooking or checking out
the bedroom performance. We don't buy a car without test driving it first
and and we don't buy hi fi equipment without first listening to it. At
least, that's how sane people do it.


Hmm, so all those 'Dumb Sheila' jokes were *true* then?

(What do ugly people do? :-)

**They bonk ugly people. Unless they're rich. Rich ugly people can bonk
pretty much whomever they want. Look at Mick Jagger.





For a kick-off, how TF do you suggest he goes about organising the
test - ask 'Valve Amps R Us' if he can play with half their stock for a
few hours then, having picked one (real easy), ask them for a circuit
diagram and a parts list for it...??

**If you can't hear it, don't buy it. Very simple.


What you suggest is barely *doable*, if not outright impossible!

**Utter bull****. Call up your dealer and organise a listen. That's what
dealers are for.

Contrary to what you're obviously used to, valve amps aren't sold on every
street corner in the UK; I can only think of one outfit that would have a
rake of them and that's Walrus. Most of the models they stock wouldn't be
very suitable for 'cloning' and I suspect they'd tell you to take a hike
if you asked to prat about doing blind tests on their premises - and,
before you ask, the likelihood of them them letting take a bunch of them
home for testing (and return) is not high, I suspect...

**Then go to another dealer.


Then, if by some chance you did manage to hear a suitable candidate for
cloning, it would *not* sound like a 'carbon copy' of it unless the
identical componernts (and, I suspect, wiring layout) was used throughout
and, even if it was, it would sound nothing like the pattern amp if it was
of any vintage. You know that yourself - see your own comments about
transformer differences in your reply to Iain.

**Correct.


What the OP needs to do is listen to those who are experienced with real
*buildable* circuits and follow the advice he likes the sound of best -
he's got to start somewhere and damn near every 'normal' PP amp on the
planet owes summat to the early Mullard designs (AFAIK) so why struggle
against it??

**Why trust what people say? Some people are seriously deluded. How is Max
to know if the people he is speaking to know anything at all? MUCH better
for him to listen to a product, BEFORE plonking down the cash.


(Different with SETs of course, but I'd recommend a SET as a start amp for
a number of reasons!)

**SETs are for idiots.

Trevor Wilson