Kyle K wrote:IIRC, in an interview with the now pretty much defunct Vacuum Tube Valley, David Hafler, when asked about why Dynaco entered the solid-state market said that SS gear sounded the same as tube gear. I was shocked that he actually said that. If the head of the company thinks that, you would think it would certainly influence marketing decisions.
EWBrown wrote:Dynaco was also trying to enter the SS amp market big time, and I'm sure that they considered tubes as "obsolete" and "less desirable" simply to sell their new products. Plus they were pushing the Big Watts, and the relatively "flea powered" stuff was too old fashioned to the sales and marketing folks. THen there were those notoriously inefecient speakers like AR-2s, AR-3s, AR-4s, etc. They were dull enough in sonic quality to hid the "sins of solid state" back then...
I still have one of the original Dynaco ST80 SS amps, and it sounds awful, when compared to an ST-35, SCA-35 or ST-70. The ST80 can make good speakers sound bad, and with lesser speakers it sounded, well, OK. Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_20
I keep it around just to demonsstrate to the "transistorized true believers" that the 60s and 70s era "sand amps" weren't really so great, after all...
/ed B in NH
EWBrown wrote:THose old ST-80 and ST-70s were in the days before complementary pair transistors, and bipolar power supplies, so the audio output had to be coupled through a big fat electrolytic capacitor, which alone destroys the sound quality. Then they also used to insert an inductor in series with the output, in the ST-80 this was wound around the body of the big (beer can sized) caps, which was really beyond the definition of "crude" design at its worst... :o :o :o ( is there an upchuck smiley? )
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