rparsh wrote:
Well, the idea of a pair of 300B monobloc amps is just too hard to resist so today May 20 I got online and ordered the Edcor iron (8 weeks to wait and drink beer not wine) also all the caps and a pair of JJ 300B for $110 a tube. Had to order the choke from AES as I will use two of my many spare 5U4 tubes. Where do you get 3 watt and 20 watt resistors? I think I will use some of the Odd Watt floating power and signal ground technology in this build just like in my built from scratch Odd Block KT88 amps. I will surely use SMPS filtered and regulated 5 volt DC to run my 300B heaters again floating and not grounded at all. 8 weeks. That will take a good bit of beer!
You won't regret it. This amp is about as far from a SS amp as you can get. I can now understand why the 300B SET is a popular amp. Don't expect thunderous volume levels, but expect a very "open, airy, detailed, silky" sound that brings out the detail in recordings.
Funny thing, some recordings sound distorted through this amp, but it's not the amp distorting. The amp just brings out the detail in the music including distortion that's on the sound source. If the source is distortion free, so is the amp. But if there's a little bit of distortion present on a recording, the amp will faithfully reproduce it instead of smearing it or smoothing it over.
Vocals, strings, guitars, and percussion "jump out of the speakers". I would add the word "lively" to describe the sound.