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Amp Advice Sought -- Next Step?


The Monkey

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My gear is in my sig. I am very happy with it, and should probably just leave it at that. But that's no fun. So I could use some help focusing on what my next amp will be. This purchase likely is well in the future, but I'd like to start the search now. My first thoughts are either a balanced b22 or something real tubey since I don't have much experience with tube amps. I guess the sound sig I am after would be on the warmer side. Budget needs to be south of 2K. Any thoughts?

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I would second Nate's suggestion to get a tan and check out amps at the same time in Florida for CanJam08. if you can get a listen to the Zana it's one of my favorites although with the rise in cap prices the amp may be above 2k when you are ready or is you go to CanJAm get a listen to Boomana's SP Plat Extreme, it is not the garden variety SP and sounds great. I am not sure I'd go 2k on solid state I think you can get a more musical and detailed sound out of tubes at that price range. Others may disagree though.

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Thanks guys. And you're absolutely right, CanJam is the perfect place to start. Nate, I would love to build, but it still just isn't feasible with the little guy around these days. I am also frustrated by my lack of casework skills. John, I forgot to mention that the Zana was among those in which I am very interested. I spent some time with it (yours?) briefly at one of the NYC meets last year (I think it was near Tom's setup?).

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what's the story behind this? I'm assuming you're referring to the 500V Black Gates?

As far as I know there aren't really any more 500V blackgates. In this case I think we're talking other caps, he used some exotica on the first 10 and had to use something else on the next 10. I wonder what he's using moving forward?
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what's the story behind this? I'm assuming you're referring to the 500V Black Gates?

Craig built the Zana and my amp with caps he had custom spec'd from his Moth days he was about to run out on the last batch of Zanas. He went back to get more made and the price tripled for them hence the increase in price. These are the two large caps that stick out of the top of the amp.

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Thrice may be building the Frank Cooter beauty that wowed many of us in Fairfax a couple weeks ago. If I had any spare cash around, and the space to put a tube amp with three power supplies, I wouldn't hesitate to go this route.

It does appear to take up a lot of shelf space and I imagine it would take up a lot of cash with all those transformers.

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Craig built the Zana and my amp with caps he had custom spec'd from his Moth days he was about to run out on the last batch of Zanas. He went back to get more made and the price tripled for them hence the increase in price. These are the two large caps that stick out of the top of the amp.

just curious what they are, if anyone knows :) never heard of custom electrolytics, and all the caps I've been looking at haven't tripled in price anytime soon.

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just curious what they are, if anyone knows :) never heard of custom electrolytics, and all the caps I've been looking at haven't tripled in price anytime soon.

Unless I'm mis-remebering things I believe that they're exotic paper-in-oil film caps, not electrolytics. I think the first version used some soy bean oil cap or something like that.
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I'm not going to build those mercury rectifier PS. Probably a less hazardous supply in one case, I hope. I'm gonna need a bigger case :)

In that case use large TV damper diodes such as the 6CJ3, they're quieter and can handle more current than traditional tube rectifiers like the 5AR4 without arcing over or doing other bad things.

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just curious what they are, if anyone knows :) never heard of custom electrolytics, and all the caps I've been looking at haven't tripled in price anytime soon.

The output caps are custom paper, polypropylene, and soybean oil, its a weird combo which I guess you could classify as a film cap NOT an electrolytic (albeit a pretty good sized film cap). The original ones for the Moth Xana were 250 uF 7.5 pound behemoths, these ones are same conductor and dialectric but obviously not as big. Craig claims the dissipation factor of the zana coupling caps is 0.004 - that is comparable to a very good electrolytic at .07, or a good film cap at .007.

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