Fragile Harmonics - Not so crazy after all? =D

[glasman]

Full output down to a load of .5 ohms

WOW! .5 That's SICK!!...THX..Gary

Wonder what they use for wire in the OPT

Tony

000 wire

[glasman]

..... and still deliver full power at 16 ohms.... I smell anoutput transformer. (didn't make it past the spec sheet)....

Went back and looked. Yupper, standard Push pull PA with LOTs of BIG transistors feeding an autotransformer. Mac did it right!!

[talbany]

Gary do they have some sort of voltage protection on the secondary?

Never mind I see it..Special features!!

Tony

[renshen1957]

I love that old McIntosh tube stuff.
That 60 year anniversary amp is awesome!

I'm still trying to talk a buddie out of a couple McIntosh mono block amps.
As far as I know they are collecting dust in his garage.

Hi,

I sure hope he doesn't have an internet connection or knows someone who looked up what those mono-blocs go for on Ebay.com before you score them.

Steve

[glasman]

Ask and you shall receive....


http://cgi.ebay.com/MCINTOSH-STEREO-POW ... 3364757b96

Sorry back to the regular programming on Fragile Harmonics and the Art of Zen Motorcycle Maintenance.

[Cliff Schecht]

One of my friends has something McIntosh that I've been trying to get from him forever. He left it at his ex-fiances house though and so I've been bugging him to pick it up ever since I finished the amp that I was supposed to trade for said McIntosh units..

[Structo]

Yeah that stuff goes for crazy money. Too bad.
For some reason I always thought McIntosh was made in England, until a few years ago.

My cousin had a nice McIntosh receiver years ago.
I didn't think she knew anything about stereos.
I go over to her house and she has this big receiver and two huge Cornwall horn loaded speakers.

I'm pretty sure the receiver was solid state but still nice.
She said she asked the guy at the stereo store what he would buy with $3K and that is what he sold her. I think she got a turntable with it too.
This was before CD.

[ampdork]

I had a "friend" (hard to call him that after) who THREW AWAY a 2300 because on the channels got "funky" on him....he has some new McIntosh that kills but what a bummer to hear I could have gotten one for free and that it went to the landfill....
Yeah the McIntosh has some amazing specs.
SS buffer in Jerry guitar...LOL ....Before Dozin's site myself and another fellow pester the snot out of Gary Brawer till he spilled the beans on how the loop and the rest was wired. Dumbles are not my first foray into mysterious rigs...LOL
The electronics of the guitars are effing insane too.

When I left Santa Rosa there were 3 Doug Irwin guitar for sale at "The Pawn Shop" (actual name)... Long story short I could have had any of the three but being I was young and in a band I decided having just a guitar was not going to work with my band. A few years later Jerry Irwin sold for some seriously crazy money. Not the first time I have passed on a guitar that later could have bought me a house . :O(


Just about done ranting but wanted to ask if anyone has ever heard of any connections between the groups?
It would never have worked anyway but I always wondered if Jerry had never tried a dumble. Something tells me though that Howard would find it very difficult to find a friend in that camp.

Very fun derail. For me at least ;O)

[talbany]

A good friend of mine who plays with Alan Jackson said on occasion they rehearse at his house..The first time he went to the bathroom he said Alan had a Mcintosh rig set up with 2 mono blocks.. IN THE BATHROOM! complete with their own ventilation..

Tony

[BobW]

The Dynaco Mk III @ 60W RMS ran a pretty close second to the Mac specs.

[renshen1957]

Thanks for the clarification concerning the way you use the term "psychoacoustic-effect".

...

Actually, I picked up the context and the term from an Electronics Guru/designer/inventor and sometime amp builder. His (and others) usage were in reference to builders (and some stubborn guitarists) that a certain component/part made significant in an amps sound as opposed to the circuit itself.

I agree and disagree with him and others on the subject on certain points.

However, ask someone in this forum about using a different type of resistors other than metal film for plate resistors when building a Dumble ODS (he would maintain using metal oxide resistors would make no difference) and I am sure their would be a lively disagreement.

Marketing blah:

It is well known in the marketing and advertising business that you have to give people at least some short technical catchphrases in a product flyer. Most consumer products are rather similar today in their practical performance in our every day lives and even their prices often are on a rather similar level.

But of course we even then have to decide which one of say three or four products we shall buy. So we all are rather happy about at least some technical catchphrases (point to point wiring, interleaved transformers, mouth blown tube envelops, NOS parts, etc. blah) because we obviously prefer to have at least some rationalizations for our buying decisions that AFAIK are influenced far more to have at least some rationalizations for our buying decisions that AFAIK are influenced far more by our limbic system

Wouldn't these technical catchphrases also help to feed the Psychoacoustic perception of the product. (Unless upon later reflection and dissatisfaction with the results, one comes to the conclusion that the product really sucked.)

But of course no experienced marketing manager will be stupid enough to really explain in a product flyer in a scientific sense why precisely an interleaved transformer is of precisely what practical advantage when playing "Sultans of Swing".

And after the same marketing blah has been repeated ten times in ten different guitar player magazines because some content is needed of course to fill the pages between the ads the herd and bandwagon etc. effects hopefully (from a marketing point of view) will care about the appropriate way of sound perception.

Which compounds the problem. Some advertising content is wrong in terms of electrical engineering, but is rationalized by the mfg to sell product ("everybody does it") or in the case of Bugera amps outright fabrications (lies) with no foundation in truth.

SS vs. tubes /digital vs. analog:

IMO it makes no sense at all to discuss the general technological differences and the general advantages and disadvantages of different technologies that can be used for the creation, production, and reproduction of music by pointing at some products that make use of one of these technologies as examples that shall prove that one technological approach is "better" than another one.

Well every technology has its strong points and weak points, but if SS and digital are on a equal playing field with Tube and Analog, then why is such a concerted effort and expenditure of cash and energy made to state that a digitial/SS has provided a product that simulates or has the "virtual" capabilities or either Tube or Analog?

In a free market economy the reason for the production of goods isn’t providing people with useful stuff but providing owners and shareholders with a profit. So in a free market economy the technological quality of a guitar amp as an example is only of interest as far as it is helpful in whatever way to achieve a profit and not as end in itself.

That may be true of mass market products to an extent in a corporate environment (and not boutique builders), however a demand must exist for a product.

The quality of Fender's short lived SS replacement line was great but line didn't cut it with their principal market (which has always been Country Players, and the Fender engineers never could figure out that Rock was going to big market any more than Hall could over at Ampeg, could see only Jazz) until after the damage was done.

Fender's re-issue of the Bassman and all the Hotrod amps was in result of dissatisfaction with the management/owner/shareholders screwing with the Blackface products over time and other more resourceful individuals in the market place capitalizing on what is my opinion mismanagement. (Red Knob The Twins, anyone?)

So IMO it makes no sense at all to judge the general capabilities, advantages and disadvantages of technologies by evaluating the specs of products that make use of one of these technologies.

It does make sense if one doesn't want to continue the mistakes of the past or if one wants to innovate.

As long as I have some happy hour with my Playboy – sorry – interleaved transformer and can afford it, why should I feel unhappy that I am just another fashion victim? Most females I know are completely aware that they are of course fashion victims and don’t feel to seem too sorry about this for a second.

There are uses of interleaved and non interleaved transformers, the choice isn't entirely fashion. I leave transformers to transformer engineers for the most part, but there are engineering considerations to use when to use such.

A Toroid output transformer is superior to a E I transformer for emf radiation, clarity of sound, bandwidth, to name a few. However, in a guitar amp (unless you add an extra tube stage and that would cost money) it sounds wrong to most individuals if they are expecting a sonic signature from the 1950's to date.

I see fashion trends in amp building, for a while everyone was building replicas (clones) of Tweed Bassman and Deluxes, Marshall Bluesbreakers, Vox EF86 based amps or influenced amps, and then the Big Boys (who originally made the amps) catch on and make their reissue takes which aren't very accurate (probably from providing owners and shareholders with a profit) which backfires on them in the end.

SS and digital technologies:

It may be hard to believe but SS and digital audio technologies today are used by 99.9 percent of all people who listen to recorded music and by nearly all musicians that don’t play an electric guitar or an acoustic instrument.

Not hard to believe at all, anymore than people only eating apples as the fruit choice as if Supermarkets only sold apples. Although I have read that a Hammond B-3 (tube I believe) is being re-issued.

I would pay real money for the Minshall Tube Organ I gave away (Mother in Law who lived with us couldn't stand 16' stops in the pedals). I could play this instrument for hours. The SS Organ which I played for a church made one enervated after 1 hour and it was the top of the line most expensive organ at the time.

Although more LPs were sold last year than CDs (which reflects internet downloads and MP3 players) digital and SS are available for two reasons, their smaller, lighter, and cheaper than analog (and more transportable).

Subminiature Vacuum Tube portable radios existed, but transistors won out. Why, transistors dominated the hearing aid market smaller size) and the battery sub minis tubes didn't have the sales to remain in production.

The US and Europe stopped producing tubes not because SS was better, rather as the military went to SS for weight and size and a PCB can be stuffed more easily with SS components. However, SS can't survive the EM pulse of a Nuclear blast which by contrast tubes can. But if it came to Nuclear War, SS and Tubes won't matter either way.

No one to date has to my knowledge replaced Transmitting tubes with solid state.

You cannot buy what isn't readily available. However High end audio drives the tube market. Thank goodness or a lot of great amps would someday go silent.

And I seldom read or view reports in our media about mass-vomiting on our streets and in our concert halls and stadiums.

Unless there at a Justin Bieber concert. Sorry OT.

If you grow up in ignorance of a technology, how could you miss it.

I am not stating SS or digital doesn't has its place or that it doesn't work. But when one does have knowledge of tube/analog in the case of audio, SS products usually come as second place in most instances. Of course if you are playing thrash or speed metal through a distortion stomp box no one will care if its SS amp because tone quality isn't a concern, IMD noise is.

[/quote]

What sounds "good":

My grandma always had a smile in her face listening to Bing Crosby with her small and cheap 40ies radio.

The small cheap 40's radio was a tube amp, but it was the content she was more concerned with.

Many girls went ecstatic when listening to George Harrison’s SS sounds.

Actually it was Paul who played the majority of the SS amp solos. George was a tube amp player through the Beatles live career, including the Roof Top concert. The free Vox SS were used to exploit a tonal quality in their studio albums. You could have equally said that the girls went ecstatic to the Beatles playing the Harmonium, however when Beatlemania was in full swing they recorded primarily with their touring gear, plus added whatever was available at Abbey Road studio. Whether heard on their parents old console (tube) or a small transistor radio, the recorded material was analog back in the day.

Edison reportedly cried when he first listened to his first LQ recordings.

Well probably more from relief of solving the problem.
Hi Fi had its origins with Avery Fisher, in the late 1920's and he pushed the envelope till he sold the name to Marantz in the 1970's (after converting to SS).

[/quote]

Many people obviously have lots of fun with the sound of computer games like Guitar Hero or Rock Band.
Many garage and high school bands seem to have lots of fun without using boutique amps.

They also have fun with Tour of Duty, however RB and GH have introduced a variety of earlier rock genre's to this generation.

As to high school bands and garage bands, my son had his first Tube Amp in High School (and gave away his SS Amp subsequently) and got a second tube amp. All of his pears who could afford a Marshall (tube) purchased one, the rest coveted the lucky few who weren't stock with "POS SS amps."

[/quote]

Many famous and first class guitar players created and still create great music that is loved by many fans using SS and digital technologies.

And many more use Tube amps in conjunction and if they can afford it build all analog studies or a combination. Too many touring musicians use tube amps even the less than famous.

Many people obviously have lots of fun listening to mp3 files thru low quality earphones.

This is a portability thing, a few warm up the digital through tube amps at home.

So I personally have strong doubts that the different technologies used for the creation and reproduction of music and their perhaps different results in regard to the quality of "tone" have a big influence on the amount of fun and emotional involvement of musicians and listeners.

Fun and emotional involvement depends on the situation. Ask anyone into Hifi audio to trade in their MacIntosh tube for a solid state equivalent and watch the profanity fly. You'll peel my The Fisher integrated amp from my dead fingers. (and haven't scratched the high end golden ears)

A doubt of a standing offer to trade brand new SS amps for tube amps would get many if any takes amongst musicians.

I play a digital piano currently as I have neither the room or the funds to afford an acoustic piano. I do so as the alternative is nothing. Does it get in the way of the enjoyment of the music. You bet it does if I compare it to my previous pianos.

"Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to pause & reflect." (Mark Twain)

In this we are in complete agreement.

I have enjoyed this thread as it brought forth many interesting points. I say I can hear those "fragile harmonics' better on analog/tube than on SS/digital.

However, we would not have Big Screen TVs at a price that most can afford if not for SS and Digital processing. Or for that matter this forum to post on.

Best Regards,

Steve

[daydreamer]

i remember reading in a psychology book, can't remember which one, but I think it's pretty well accepted point, that; we will always do what we feel over what we reason.

Wiki link describes it a little, but I remember it being quite a strong point being made, more along the lines of we ALWAYS decide emotionally then justify it with reason later, even if it's split seconds later!!


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_bias

It stands to reason!!

[Max]

it was the content she...[my grandma]...was more concerned with

Hi Steve,

indeed, the people on this planet like music but only very very few of them (in relation) are "into HiFi audio". And not few of those I know who are "into HiFi audio" spend more time listening to test tracks than listening to music. But of course "HiFi" is a great hobby and provides us boys with great toys and of course it is a nice topic for a boy chat, too.

McIntosh prices:

The real cool Jerry Garcia/Grateful Dead stuff: http://cgi.ebay.com/Mcintosh-mc2300-Amp ... 3cb4841f2f

Here's a nice preamp to combine: http://www.alembic.com/prod/f2b.html

Tiger: http://www.dozin.com/jers/guitars/tiger/info.html

The Tiger wiring: http://dozin.com/jers/guitars/tiger/tiger_schematic.htm

BTW: Bourns make a replica of the AB pots: http://www.bourns.com/data/global/pdfs/82.pdf

Unity gain buffer (an example): http://www.caesound.com/cb1_spec_3.pdf

An Alembic Stratoblaster or EMG JG-2 etc. will probably do the job, too.

Have fun!

Max

[renshen1957]

it was the content she...[my grandma]...was more concerned with

Hi Steve,

indeed, the people on this planet like music but only very very few of them (in relation) are "into HiFi audio". And not few of those I know who are "into HiFi audio" spend more time listening to test tracks than listening to music. But of course "HiFi" is a great hobby and provides us boys with great toys and of course it is a nice topic for a boy chat, too.


Max

Hi Max,

Thank you for the links, great stuff.

I know a bunch of "golden ear" people that have albums (LPs) they audition when they "test" drive different (and usually very expensive) audio signal caps. Usually vocals, Saxophone, Cellos, etc. And if you are really into low Bass reproduction Classical Organ Music (especially the North German Baroque school and some of the later Symphonic Organ works) gets measured on the Richter scale.

I didn't grow up around Hi Fi (an old tube powered console, TV, Radio, record player came later, in my early married life), we listened to records on a mono record player, until my sister received a portable stereo record player for Xmas circa her first year of college (which was solid state).

My life was changed however with my first mid-fi NAD 3020 (SS) and a Bang & Olafsen turntable both of which I purchased used 20 years after first drooling over both as a potential first component system. Compared with my CD collection, the majority of LPs I acquired made an audible difference. Friends I had over (to be Guinea Pigs) for blind AB tested asked what I had done to remove the veil from the music.

To make a long story short, I scored a The Fisher X-202 C integrated amp through ebay for cheap (a state of the art tube amp in the 1960's, if not exactly a MacIntosh) and was blown away by the soundstage, interior details on very well known recordings. Heck, my wife's Chinese popular music downloaded mp3 files sound incredible on a tube powered stereo system as does my meager CD collection, too.

I have replayed a lot of music, and re-discovered much more because of the better Fidelity. I would say that improved sound has increased both my listening pleasure and how much I am into music (all music).

I've became more interested in Audiophile as a result of Guitar amps and the Hi-Fi connection. Sunn Amps were just Dynaco amps, Paul McCartney played bass through a Leak amp until the Vox's gentleman's agreement, the original OT for the first Vox AC 30 and early Marshalls were Radio Spares used in Hi-Fi equipment). As a result some cross-pollination from the Hi-Fi realm occurred that I now incorporate.

I grew up near San Francisco in Napa till 1969 (we moved because of my health) and heard the Dead one time playing for free in Golden Gate park (and being San Francisco, nobody gave a shit or called the Police) and during the Summer of Love it was the scene. My Dad drove my sister to a number of Concerts (which I was too young to attend) but on the fringes I heard some great bands, too. My sister purchased a number of classic albums which I listened to, there was no shortage of talent in SF.

The Grateful Dead used to store one of their sound systems in Santa Barbara area, they had played Earl Warren Showgrounds back in the day (so did Jimi Hendrix, but this was before I moved there) and later the Santa Barbara Bowl , but being married with children never got to attend a concert.

However without Rangemasters, Sola Fuzztones, Oktavias, Tube Screamers, and too many to list pedals all which used transistors or IC's aka SS a lot of interesting music would have turned out differently or not at all. And the effect would have been different through a SS amp.

Best Regards,

Steve

[Structo]

Man, that's a lot of words....