Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Karma... or.. you gotta hook a brother up!

I had these old bass cabs - basically overgrown A7's - that I dragged to Texas thinking some DIY'er would snatch them up and I'd cover my gas money. I was wrong. Apparently small drivers rule in Texas. Well, to be fair, there were some large drivers, but they were on boards the size I use for building amps...


sorta like these that I loaned to all-around good guy Duke LeJeune. The poor guy had planned on running a tube amp from Richard Gray. Richard had some issues and could not make it. Duke sounded genuinely bummed, so I offered him a breadboard that I had thrown in last minute. I told him what it looked like, and, to his credit, he got even more excited. He loved the sound, and brother number one was hooked up.

Brother number two is vintage hifi blogger Iain.. super cool blog about vintage gear and he is always remarking that bigger is better, so I stopped in on the way back through Little Rock and gave him the bass cabinets. He was so excited that he negotiated some "pretty big mercury rectifiers that his friend acquired" for me..


That "medium sized" tube next the mercuries is a western 354 - a GIANT tube to anyone I know. He gave me enough of these to build a stacked supply direct coupled 250Tl driving a 2000T! So that makes me brother number three... and closes my Karma circle.

(so to brother scott in AZ: you did me a solid... it is coming back to you soon)

4 comments:

  1. Good to hear you made some good Karma there in Longhorn country.

    We all need it, surely. Still,I must ask, how was the show for you guys? Any sound, what did you hear, did you have fun? And, well, how did it look?

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  2. karma rules...
    in so many ways...

    that is a beautiful amp.
    i'm @ the point where that's the type amp i ejoy most, easier to "watch" the music go through it...

    sound--
    my friend that heard big horns for the first time called again last night; said something to the effect that "you can't go back after hearing them. they can be playing so quiet, then instantly get so big. not just loud, but big. the emia room wasn't as usually as loud as the other rooms, but the sound got big."
    maybe he "got it?"

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  3. Instant Karma.

    It was great meeting you and the cabs are cool. Glad you got to hang out for a few minutes. It does help break up a trip. I'd love to hear those amps sometime.

    Bigger is better. Bigger doesn't have to be louder but the sound seems to flow easier and is more real and dynamic. At least that is my excuse or rationalization for big speakers. Ya can't fight physics. If you do you'll lose every time.

    Thanks again.

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  4. You need to use those 857B's in an amp I think. They would go perfect with 849 or 851s.

    I have a stash of 869 (smaller but still huge) I have thought of using like that. 354A looks tiny in comparison. ;-)

    -Ed

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