[ARC5] 1626 tubes

[Ian Wilson]

I did something similar to Frank, a few months back: built a single-ended
triode stereo amplifier. Mostly this was because I'd acquired some nice
NOS 6B4's, and also because I thought it would be interesting to listen
to a SE triode amplifier. Bought a couple of Hammond 125CSE transformers
(these have a wide air gap for increased saturation current in single-ended
use. They are also sensibly priced).

The result was very pleasing, particularly when compared to the solid-state
amplified speakers that I had been using (should have mentioned that the
amplifier is used for playing music from the sound o/p of my main PC).
There's a trace of hum but that's because I got a bit lazy in the power
supply, there's a choke here somewhere waiting to be added in. The sound
is very clean, perhaps due to the absence of any crossover distortion.

For me, these subjective things have to be evaluated using A/B testing to
have any validity. That seems to be the whole problem with the lunatic
audio crowd: any sort of approach to scientific evaluation is frowned on.

IMO, it's not fair to liken this to wines. After all, there are many
very objectively run wine competitions; for a wine to do well in one of
these it must have been judged highly by several independent judges, and
must have compared well to its competitors.

Oh, back to the thread: I wouldn't have considered using 1626's for this,
but that's only because the 6B4 is a much sexier tube :)

73, ian K3IMW