[hopeforcash]

Hi all, Haven't been here before only as I search the net I've come across.  I'm trying to get some info on the Radii GS33SE monoblocks and noticed there have been some people with experience with Radiis here.  However, most of the threads are older.  Are there still people around that can help?

I have gotten the Radii homepage and basically got the specs ...http://www.radaudio.com/gs33.html

20W/ch
three tubes

What I hope to get are some reviews, used value price, and the actual retail price.  I assume these are still current amps and not discontinued?

Thanks in advance.

[hopeforcash]

Hi, no one running any Radii equipment?

I have further searched, there are no North American dealers anymore?

Thanks

[TIC]

I've seen Radii equipment a couple of times. It appeared to be rebadged Antique Sound Labs (ASL) stuff. It looked identical. You might try looking on the ASL site or the Divergent Technology (NA Distributor for ASL) site for the comparable ASL amp. However, I don't know if they are identical.

I don't know if ASL and/or Radii built their own stuff or if they simply put their name on stuff produced by a large Chinese manufacturer. I've seen lots of instances of multiple brand names on the exact same Chinese sourced product. A dealer friend of mine said some of the Chinese companies would sell to anyone regardless of dealer rights, etc. He was buying a famous Chinese speaker and having it rebadged with his name on it.

Anyway, I remember seeing Radii at the 2003 Midwest Audio Fest (MAF) in the Bolder Cable room. You may want to go to the Bolder Cable forum here and ask Wayne if he knows anything. I think he was a dealer in the past.

Enjoy,

TIC

[Wayne1]

I used to sell some of the Radii gear.

They are designed by Mr. Santa Man.

They are built in the same factory that builds the ASL gear. So the chassis and a lot of the parts are the same. The circuitry is a bit different.

The circuit is well designed. The price is very reasonable. However the cost of importing and providing repair service for the the gear proved to be too much for me.

As far as I know, there is no current importer of Radii gear in the US.

Scott F has a pair of Radii mono blocks. Actually he had three mono-blocks that he used to put together a pair that worked.

Jason Wong (PEZ) has a Radii stereo power amp and a Radii pre-amp. I haven't heard from Jason for about a year. The last time I heard from him he was looking for a set of the slightly obscure driver tubes used in the power amp.

[Scott F.]

Thats true. I bought a pair of GS75's from Wayne a few years ago. Between shipping back and forth to Wayne, the gorillas at UPS literally destroyed one.

I've pretty much gutted the amps of their stock parts. I had issues with the grid stopper and anode resistors blowing. Radii was using some cheap brand of resistor that couldn't tolerate the heat dissipation and in turn they popped on a regular basis. I've since replaced all of the resistors that see any hardcore action with quality 1 watt resistors along with replacing all of the caps in the signal path with V-Caps. These amps don't sound a thing like they did when they were stock.

I don't have a clue if they are still using the 'cheap' resistors. Oh another thing, the Radii's are PCB based where the ASL stuff (the GS75s are the equivilant of an ASL Monsoon) is all point to point as I understand.

[hopeforcash]

Thanks for the valuable info!!

Very hard to find.

Does anyone know a monobloc of these caliber and with EL34s make a big difference in sound versus a EL34 integrated?  I already have a Golden Tube SI50mk2 running EL34 PP (50W/ch) and wondering would this be better, same or worse.

Also what is a good price now for the GS33SE (EL34 single ended blocs, 20W)?

[Scott F.]

You should see a tiny bit better separation with monos. Where the inprovement comes is in the separated power supply. You now have more amperage delivery to each channel. The most audible change would likely be in the bass region, that and micro dynamics.

That said, the gains would be relatively small compared to your Golden Tube. If Radii is using the same Chinese PIO caps, I'd bet your GT sounds cleaner than the stock Radii. Personally, I'd do some mods to the Golden Tube. Coupling caps, bypass caps on the power supply, nice resistors in the signal path, power film resistor in the B+ and if you can swing it, Black Gates as the main power supply caps. All of those or a combination, will make a drastic difference in the sound of your GT. If you can't solder, give Bill Baker a buzz at Response Audio (he has a Circle here). Bill does mods all kinds of gear.