Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 3:31 pmReal purdy, Thermion! I can see what you mean about the rust!
Don
Don
Today is the first chance I've had to hook up these new Ikes and see what they sound like. I put a pair of Tungsol 6SU7GTY tubes in the GC stage and a pair of RCA offset black plate 6SN7GTB tubes in the LTP. The outputs are JJ KT-88s biased at 64ma. Along with the new Ike monoblocks, I'm using a PS Audio 4.6 preamp and a Rotel RCD-965BX Limited Edition CD player. The speakers are my recently acquired B&W 802 Series 80 loudspeakers. These are amazing speakers, certainly the best sounding speakers I have ever had in my home.
The Ikes are dead quiet with the volume turned up. You have to get your ear a few inches from the speaker drivers to hear any noise. We measured about 2.3mv of noise during bench testing. The JJ output tubes bias up real well and hold their settings. After a few hours of listening to music I'm very impressed with these amps. The bass is tight and powerful, the mids liquid and the highs smooth. The low frequency resonances on track 7 on Mickey Hart's Planet Drum CD are especially impressive. There is plenty of power with a pair of KT-88s. This Ike circuit allows you to to produce some really high performance amplifiers. Better than any Dynaco rebuild I've done. These will probably stay put until the new coupling caps come in.
JT