I went down to Gary Dodd's this weekend and heard some new amps.
He has been quiet lately but busy working on new stuff. He had some new single ended mono-blocks that used a single 300B tube in the output. They actually made 20 watts, and they sounded great. They are really a completely different approach to a single ended amp design. I'll let Gary fill you guys in on them if you are interested in those.
The real eye opener though was a new Hybrid amp. It was a solid state amp with a tube front end on it. It was a stereo amp in an all milled Aluminum chassis that weighed in at 95 pounds. It was an all dual mono design that only shared the incoming power cord. I think Gary said it was 200 watts into 8 ohms rated conservatively.
That hybrid sounded incredible. It had everything you'd ever want in an amp. It had none of the typical ill effects of a solid state amp, but with all the dynamics, low distortion, and driving force of a big solid state amp. The critical mid-range was smooth and uncolored. Yet it was very musical just like a good tube amp. Gary may have just hit the right balance. It is really overbuilt as one would expect from Gary's designs, and everything was laid out so that little to no internal wiring was needed. It was all point to point. It also only has one capacitor in the signal path. Changing out that one cap and rolling the tubes would give one the ability to further refine it. I will have to have Gary bring it up here pretty soon so it can be compared to my big blue mono-blocks.
Any of you guys in the Dallas area that are interested in buying you last amplifier should get ahold of this thing and give it a listen. Even if you are not in the Dallas area, it might be worth the trip.
