Post by ericn on Apr 12, 2017 16:11:45 GMT -6
Hi Guys, absolutely there are Chinese Audiophiles. I just bought a Douk stereo tube power amp brand new for $450 it has a pair of KT88(6550) tubes on each side. So, this amp is basically two Leslie 60 watt RMS power amps in one case.
The quality is actually better in my opinion than the majority of tube amps made back in the day. I made pocket money in the mid 60's putting Dynakit tube kits together for folks. They build quality is better than the DYNA Mark IV which used a pair of 6550 tubes.
In the late 60's we use to take the DYNA Mark IV and put a Hi Z preamp in it so it could be used as a bass amp. It blew a Fender Bassman away and most other bass amps until the Ampeg SVT came along.
I am going to use my new tube power amp to drive a pair of Tannoy Gold 12b speakers that I just bought. This way, I have some modern active speakers and some old school studio monitors driven by a tube amplifier.
The Sony MXP3036 has 4-speaker select buttons, so damn it I am determined to have 4 sets of speaker I really like to select from.
I also have a DOUK class "A" singe 6550 tube amp which delivers about 18 watts RMS per side driving my NHT Zero 2.0 bookshelf speakers. These are lovely for guaging whether you can hear the bass in the mix on small speakers.
The speakers I really, really like though are the ATC SCM 25a powered monitors. I heard them at Chuck Ainlay's studio in Nashville and WOW!!!! Except these puppies are $8K a pair.
You have to select every capsule if you are serious about making a quality microphone. We get several e-mails a year from Chinese Companies with folks trying to sell us 3 micron skinned capsules and single sided capsules.
Single side CARDIOD ONLY are much cheaper to use since you don't have to match the front and back capacitance and response.
Shanghai Electronics who we primarily deal with is a small Company and have about 10-15 employees. We have been working with them for just over 10 years and the quality seems to get better each year partly because we gently but constantly push them.
Except, after Chinese New Year when some of the staff do not return and they have to train new girls in the capsule room. We have learned to time our orders until the new girls get up to "speed".
We actually pay them an extra couple of dollars a capsule to have them all run through their anechoic "closet" to make sure each capsule meets our benchmark response curve.
Then the capsules are QC'd again here in our shop.
Like the original ELA M251 we use a roll-off capacitor between the plate and ground to tame the rise of the capsule up at 10-12 kHz. A capacitor has a 6db/octave curve. The C12 used the same CK12 capsule but there was no LP or high frequency roll-off capacitor.
For, the CM251 if we choose the capacitor for a 6db roll-off at 20khz then the microphone response will be 3db down at 10khz and 1.5db down 5khz.
Vincent, you are in good company with the CM251. When Jack Douglas heard our CM251 on Jill Scott at Blackbird he immediately bought one from us and then two month later called me at the shop to buy a 2nd one.
It was an amazing thrill to have one of my heroes call me up personally and wanted to buy a second CM251 from us. Jack is a lovely guy and he told me when he recorded Double Fantasy, he rehearses the tracking musicians the day before the session from the charts he had written for John's compositions but he didn't tell the studio players who the session was for. When they returned the next morning for the tracking date John Lennon walked in which was a big surprise to them and suddenly the excitement level increased.
Now, the job is to pick the right microphone and place them were they can capture that excitement.
Cheers, Dave
aamicrophones.com
Hey Dave
If you don't mind ,what is your Capsole reject rate?
The one thing about those old Dyna tube amps is the Transformers are still considered some of the best !