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hi i have a preamp and amp tube separated and phono stage box (cambridge duo),if i put a wire ground between phono stage and preamp chassis is it ok! i must mention that i have a rega planar 3 and i dont have ground wire on the rca cable on this turntable

Patina is only original once. I vote to keep them as is 🤠

😂😂sorry, kazoo comment just got me, are there any Chinese built tube amps that are even worth purchasing as a base for mod/rebuild project? Your final opinions on all of them seem to say NO!

Ja mam Denona dl 103 ustawionego na 52 mm na Bearwald'a i jest bardzo dobrze.

What’s the cost of upgrades you did?😊

I believe a lot of these cheap class-d amps manufacturers publish output figures at 10% thd into 4 ohms.

Absolutely keep the original badges, it's the right thing to do. I fear new copies would taint the old-school vibes of the original badges. Love the vid, much gratitude. Eagerly waiting for you exploration with these pieces. I did some tube stuff back in the late 70s, but over time became a BJT guy, but now, are you ever swaying me into the magical world of tubes again! Stuff has gotten crazy spendy though, I used to drop about $18 for a KT88 back in the late 70s, and that was in Canadian Dollars! 12XA7 were almost giveaways, sigh.

Really nice chassis for the KT88 Monoblocks!! I would keep the vintage patina on the transformers, i think that is cool. I'm not keen on the mint green color idea, but you do you....I'll still watch! I think you should stick to the single ended designs, if that interests you and you understand them. Its more about the sound quality of a tube amp than push-pull power output, IMHO. And if you need more power, there are some bigger SE tubes available to try, or maybe a more complicated design with more SE gain stages...? I'd love to see you do a comparison of the trendy Cryotone tubes vs your favorite PSVanes, head to head in one of your amps....just an idea for a future video. Thanks!

Hi Stephe. I worked with some old coke bottle style 6V6Gs. They may look cool, but their performance wasn't too good. Try them out, but I came to the conclusion that 6V6GT (most American brands) are better. Someone mentioned using a 6GH8 or 7199 as a voltage amplifier/phase splitter. The problem comes from using the tube the way it was intended. While the pentode voltage amplifier's cathode operates close to ground potential, the phase splitter operates at a high cathode potential; 90 volts or more. We have a compromise situation caused by the common heater. You can get nasty problems, not the least being hum and distortion when the heater operates at or near ground potential, that often gets worse over time.

Fantastic video and one I will be coming back to. Thank you for taking the time to put it together.

Hi Stephe, been following your vids and was particularly interested in the little 6BM8 amp that you made. I have just aquired a pair of 6BM8/ECL82 monoblock amps rated at 8 watts/channel. Do you think these will be suitable for driving Klipsch RP600M speakers in a 16' x 10' room. AVREAVOX ARCANA 82 MONO POWER AMPLIFIERS Greetings from the UK

Would I damage the amp if I use GZ34 rectifier tubes without doing the mods ?

I'm an electrical engineer with Ms. In controls and I have lots of fun with your projects! I'm sorry to hear about this ridiculous comments.. your channel is great!!

@Skunkie. Nice projects coming down the pike! I am definitely going to follow the KT-88 monoblock project. In terms of a tube push pull amp, well, I don't want to burst your bubble on that, but my first foray into tube amplifiers were with push pull amps. I had a vintage Bell labs (circa late 50's) stereo push pull 6V6 amplifier that I played around with and while it sounded good, I just felt it never really had that tube sound. I had tried tube rolling and that really didn't work. It was with this amp that I had entered the world of global negative feedback and learned more about push pull amps. While you probably already know this, but push pull amp designs inherently cancel out even order distortion, so learning this put a big damper on my initial push pull amp projects. So, then I have discovered that these amps use copious amounts of global negative feedback to deal with the odd order harmonic distortion that was left. In the end, you have a fairly sterile sounding tube amplifier which really only sounds marginally better than a transistor amp. Granted, perhaps it was just the Bell Labs design, but then again, doing more research, back in the day, when there weren't any transistor amps, designed were driven to make the amps have as low a distortion as possible, kind of like the transistor amps did in the 70's. Lower distortion meant more accurate reproduction of sound. So the correlation between push pull tube amp designs and push pull transistor amps became more clear. I knew that what I wanted was something that was going to preserve the all important 2nd harmonic, and the only way to do that was with a class A design. Now, I don't know if using a design with much less global negative feedback might help. Or if there is a way to reduce the canceling effect on the push pull outputs. That might be asking for more trouble than it is worth. For me, the only place where I would feel a push pull tube amp would be worth a look see, is with a guitar amp. Here is where you need lots of power and the amp can be driven into distortion, and with tubes, this is far more compressive, rather than a brick wall effect. Also, rectifier sag comes into play as well. So there is still a lot to be had with a push pull design on a guitar amp. But for hi-fi? Hmmmm, you might be wasting your time. Keep up the great work! I enjoy this channel very much and love what you do and what you have to say. Again, will definitely be looking at the KT-88 mono blocks and how the Musical Paradise project ends up. Cheers!

Hi , I am not am engineer, imo you got offended too much for you own good. Maybe the guy was stating what you found obvious or not paying attention to all you said but I don't think it was personal. Anyway, I appreciate your effort in these thorough analyses and sharing them on video

As a qualified electronics engineer with 30 years behind me and very experienced musician, I'm loving your channel because I'm learning so much. You're way ahead of most engineers becuase you have a practical approach and don't get weighed down by all the calculations. Love your work!

I'm not a engineer,🚂I'm a bass player. Not professional. But good. I love tubes and reselecting tube amps in chassis of there own like RCA. Make guitar amps in industrial chassis of diff design. Do what you like. Right now I'm using 2 Nos Merit power transformers with pwr like 350-0-350 @250ma and 3 6 volt heater strings one 10A. Big stuff. Anyhoo. I've got 20 things going at once. Let ya know when I get one done. Thanks for all ya do.

Come on Skunkie...while the overview of their offerings as well as their philosophy was helpful, all we really wanted to know was how well they sound compared to other cables you have used. You got this...please follow-up with a Part 2 and thank me later.

I fell for the bait; “If you are going to own expensive gear it must be hooked up with expensive cables, else you are wasting your money”. I little over 20 years ago, we moved to a new home where I was very disappointed with the sound I was getting with my speaker placement. One weekend when my wife was gone to her mother’s place for the weekend I decided to move my speakers where they should sound best and it was a real success. Now I had opted to use my old cheap cables since the speaker cables had banana plugs and the interconnect was none locking making it easier to connect and disconnect, so I was really looking forward to an evening listening session with my super expensive cables expecting an even more amazing sound. Well, that was my first audio snake oil awakening call.

I currently use Kimber 8PR pure copper speaker cables bi-wiring my Living Voice speakers. The dealer gave me a set of cheapo bi-wire jumpers later I harvested the banana plugs from. I tried these banana plugs with my bi-wire binding posts. I beleive they made from brass. They sound not as transparent as bare wires connecting directly. I also bought Blue Jeans LC-1 cables and terminated one pair with Chinese copy Audioquest silver plated pure copper RCA plugs and one pair with Nuetrik XLR plugs/jacks. They both sound great for the price but cannot compete with my snake oil Audioquest Water interconnects.

cleaner wax for car finish is about all I'd do with them. Should shine them up a bit without going nuts.

“They had to raise the ceiling in the room” 😂🤣😂 Spot on….

OMG…🤦‍♂️ Everyone’s a damn expert in those forums. I’d personally leave those transformers alone. Wouldn’t touch em. The patina is just part of their story. Skunkie Designs Electronics. Best DIY channel, hands down. “I’m an engineer” 😂🤣 Ah, geez…I feel your pain and totally understand. Heard it plenty of times. 😂

Keep em original!

Engineers…. all the brains in the world, with NO common sense to operate with.

Do not paint them if they're old iron show off the old iron

I feel you, there’s a massive difference between following the numbers and using your intellect. I am pretty sure it’s called common sense.

In the upper range of LineMagnetic they have a vertical amp, looks fantastic. Everything is on display.

That patina took 50 years to create and has a lot more value than a 5 min spray paint job.

Love KT-88's and who doesn't?

I'm an engineer. keep the irons the way they are to maximize performance.

I would keep the patin, it really fits with the look and just screams authentic. I really think the age adds character in this type of application.

for the transformers, I prefer keeping original.

Leave 'em alone! They're only original once :-).

Leave the patina. Buff them up and take what you get.

Something that Janos on Real World Audio has found is that tube amps can punch much above their weight when driving speakers, compared to driving a test resistor. The key is to not skimp on the PSU or output transformer.. A few nominal tube watts can sound very generous when backed up by over sized iron and reservoir caps.

my class T (texas instruments speak for class D)small amps are 8 watts/channel. which is plenty for me.

call yourself a scientist. no degree is required for that.

Thanks for the nice review!

Exciting build! Thanks for doing it.... 🙂

I think the "old" look would be nice... :-)

The bottom looks great, but don't the slots limit mounting options for the components? 🙂

I recommend you use a 6gh8 for the input amp/splitter. its just like a 7199 but different connections and lots cheaper. In 1970 I got a good acrosound (ultra linear) transformer and built a push pull 6l6 amp that sounded great.I used a 6sn7 2 stage driver/tone control with a push pull interstage transformer.built a base reflex enclosure for a 8 inch wide range speaker to go with it. made a good workshop system. the old 6v6 tubes are a good choice. you can get a easy 10watts

👍♥️🫂

If you go with the seafoam green chassis your old trannies will stick out like a sore thumb. They would look fine on a black or grey chassis. But you’ll have to go whole-hog with the seafoam and paint the trannies that color too. Get a train set so you can also start every post with “I’m an engineer and….”

Please don't paint the transformers.

leave the transformers old

hi,the push-pull amp cancel pair harmonics and double impair harnonics distorsion, its the reason why you need global negative feedback .

Seeing as you are making a 50s amp, I'd leave the age marks to reflect its heritage.....

Hey Steph, i am pumped for your upcoming build! I was in love with the idea of those 120 monoblocks. Have you ever thought about converting the amp designs to some pcb's, with gorgeous layouts, and selling those on Tindie or some other service? Or as kits straight from your website, even.