kevin gilmore

A 6h30 is useful for only one thing. A cathode follower. Or a preamp output. Definitely not as a gain tube. And certainly not as part of an output stage that drives headphones. Sacd Lover, don't cheap out. Go full balanced. Might as well do it now, or you might hate yourself later. Which means you need 8 x 6c33

Mikhail just called me and told me what the schematic is. It is certainly NOT a T2 as that is a solid state/tube hybrid. The BH is much more like a T2 in this respect. Mikhail's amplifier is a single tube differential amplifier, with the second tube as a direct coupled cathode follower, which is ac coupled to the output tubes. The output tubes are directly coupled to the load. I assume there is some feedback. Multiple plate resistors and lots of standing power for the output section. Something like 15 watts per tube. Similar to the BH in power consumption. (i.e. great for cold winter nights) So in this respect its more like a SRA3S except with a drive tube in the middle. As far as the woo audio amp, who can argue with quality like this. At that price it is a bargain. Edit: not the sra3s, as that is also a solid state/tube hybrid. More like this http://www.bonavolta.ch/hobby/en/audio/hdgsta.htm

Time for my 2 cents. The SR-007 does in fact go to dc. But the sound is severly limited by the choice of output tube, you can tube roll the thing night and day and you still can't get away from the fact that a 450 volt (max) tube is being pushed to 700 volts. The Rp of the tube limits what it can do at low frequencys. Coming some time in the future is the KGST which has 6s4 output tubes which have about half the impedance of 6cg7's. And are rated for the voltage. Fully DC coupled. The ES-1 and BH share the same output tubes. About 4 times the power of a sr-007. The ES1 is based on my ac coupled design. The BH is fully dc coupled. They sound much more similar than you might think. No one is currently making BH's. So if you want one, you would either have to build it, which is a significant amount of work, or pry one out of someone who already has one. I should also mention that i own an aristaeus, and i very much like the sound of that too.