What is the most powerful tube amplifier available today ?

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FullRangeMan

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Re: What is the most powerful tube amplifier available today ?
« Reply #40 on: 5 Sep 2012, 11:52 pm »
From what I have seen, lack of tech info is for hide poor specifications.
If a tube amp site not show underside images, the amp do not use hand wiring, it use PCB for mass production.
But Lack of price info is understandable.

srb

Re: What is the most powerful tube amplifier available today ?
« Reply #41 on: 6 Sep 2012, 12:56 am »
If a tube amp site not show underside images, the amp do not use hand wiring, it use PCB for mass production.

Not necessarily.  I have seen hand wired tube amps with messy looking wiring, sloppy solder joints, wires passing through tight clearance drilled holes without grommets and cheap capacitors.  If that were my mess, I wouldn't want to show photos of it either.
 
Steve

FullRangeMan

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Re: What is the most powerful tube amplifier available today ?
« Reply #42 on: 6 Sep 2012, 01:09 am »

Not necessarily.  I have seen hand wired tube amps with messy looking wiring, sloppy solder joints, wires passing through tight clearance drilled holes without grommets and cheap capacitors.  If that were my mess, I wouldn't want to show photos of it either.
 
Steve
I also have see it.
Other reason I reject PCB amps is the circuit is the same forever, the PCB prevent any change it the circuit.
With a hand wiring amp the circuit or parts can be modified. :thumb:
« Last Edit: 6 Sep 2012, 06:29 am by FULLRANGEMAN »

reini

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Re: What is the most powerful tube amplifier available today ?
« Reply #43 on: 30 Jan 2015, 07:08 pm »
Hi folks,
I´m in Germany and an experienced builder of Super Power amps. These are my personal champions:

300W using 8*6159, 2*ECC99,1*12AY7
http://www.stadtbahnfreund-h.de/misc/pa300_new1.jpg

appr. 1000W using 6*715B by made by Western Electric, 3*5998, 1*5687,2*12AU7
http://www.stadtbahnfreund-h.de/misc/impact800.jpg

appr. 2000W using 4*GU81, 6*6CA7,5687
http://www.stadtbahnfreund-h.de/misc/gu81-2kw.jpg

FullRangeMan

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Re: What is the most powerful tube amplifier available today ?
« Reply #44 on: 6 Feb 2015, 09:15 pm »
Wow impressive amps.
In what application you use these amps?

JoshK

Re: What is the most powerful tube amplifier available today ?
« Reply #45 on: 6 Feb 2015, 10:27 pm »
I think the problem with high non-OTL tube powered amps is the output transformer.   Pretty hard to find that large of OPT that doesn't have tons of parasitics leading to rolled off highs.  A whole lot easier to make a OPT for 50-100w then 500w.   There are companies like McIntosh that do a whole lot of trickery to get around such issues, but that gets complicated and those special transformers are going to be quite expensive in small quantities.

JoshK

Re: What is the most powerful tube amplifier available today ?
« Reply #46 on: 6 Feb 2015, 10:29 pm »
I also completely agree with Niteshade's preference for 2 or maybe 4 output tubes rather than lots of paralleled tubes.  Parallel tubes introduces a whole lot of complexity and expensive in maintenance.

Freo-1

Re: What is the most powerful tube amplifier available today ?
« Reply #47 on: 6 Feb 2015, 10:37 pm »
I think the problem with high non-OTL tube powered amps is the output transformer.   Pretty hard to find that large of OPT that doesn't have tons of parasitics leading to rolled off highs.  A whole lot easier to make a OPT for 50-100w then 500w.   There are companies like McIntosh that do a whole lot of trickery to get around such issues, but that gets complicated and those special transformers are going to be quite expensive in small quantities.

Yes, but wouldn't you just love to own a pair of these..

http://www.ebay.com/itm/McIntosh-MC3500-tube-amp-amplifier-pair-MINTY-s-11N18-11N19-orig-boxes-/181657369897?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a4b9f7d29

finsup

Re: What is the most powerful tube amplifier available today ?
« Reply #48 on: 6 Feb 2015, 11:21 pm »
How's Blair doing anyway?  Has anyone heard from him?

reini

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Re: What is the most powerful tube amplifier available today ?
« Reply #49 on: 24 Feb 2015, 07:19 pm »
Wow impressive amps.
In what application you use these amps?
No. 1 is for musicians, a vocal PA Amp with good smooth but mighty sound for voices. The SE130 double core makes 25hz at 300watts. The 6159 tubes work at 680volts
No. 2 is designed for bass at 1000watts power but in real life the 715B pulse tubes with feedbacked drivers (to reduce distorsion) seemed to be a little slow, therefore the musicians used it as a vocal amp for gigs in big halls.
No3 is a 2KW output amp for measurements eg. to test high voltage transformers (up to 100kV) used in laser applications. It was build to order because the owner experienced lots of problems testing these transformers using solid state amps.

FullRangeMan

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Re: What is the most powerful tube amplifier available today ?
« Reply #50 on: 24 Feb 2015, 08:37 pm »
Really fascinanting  :thumb:
I unaware there people using tubes amps in PA.
Thanks for inform.

PLATINUM

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Re: What is the most powerful tube amplifier available today ?
« Reply #51 on: 26 Mar 2019, 12:07 am »
@reini
I am very interested in the amps you build. Please contact me