Too long between drinks, again!! In the past few months I've somehow fallen back into the tube world after avowing off them and selling my Modwright preamp......
I discovered a local guy selling an amp that I vaguely knew by reputation and the price was right so down that particular rabbit hole I go again. It's an 80s built English tank built by a chap called Roy Grant- the Grant G100AS. Sporting a pair of 12AU7 and 12AX7, plus a quad of KT77 it looks good for 50 watts per channel. Well, I say looks good- in fact its strictly utilitarian being built by an engineer rather than a marketing man!
Anyway the proof is in the pudding and it sounded sublime, even with the 30-odd year old tubes. So I had it tidied up by a local tech who just happens to know these relatively obscure things well, and even owns one himself. So now it contains a few choice Mundorf capacitors, some new Gold Lion KT77 and NOS Telefunken and Westinghouse small tubes. Right now the sound is a bit all over the place, but I expect big things.
I've also discovered a new player in the Aussie amp builder market, a man called Ben Johnson (no, not the disgraced sprinter!) who runs a small outfit called Nano Audio Technology and builds lovely little single ended tube amps. After a lot of discussion, and hearing what he can do we have decided to join forces somewhat and demonstrate the Contrast Audio speakers with his creations.
I'll have one or possibly two of his babies with me soon I hope to see how well the immediacy and natural tones of Contrast Audio match with 8 or 4.5 watts of creamy single ended goodness.
In other news my beloved Yamaha B-2, which catastrophically died last year came back even better than new, with a fresh set of "A" spec Vfets and all new transistors on the driver boards. This is on top of an extensive rebuild that occurred a while back! To say I'm enamoured with the sound of Vfet amps is an understatement, but even this has had it's crown taken by the KT77 Grant amp.....
