Grant Fidelity Audio - Read Only

[VintageToo]

My audio system at home is a mixed bag of vintage pieces that I have both bought new and had refurbed. I am currently running horizontal bi-amping and recently my 90's Sony TA-N220 power amp (100w/ch) was suddenly starting to sound flat.

This amp ran the top end (850hz to 20000hz) and has always sounded very good (driven by a Cyrus CD transport and Sony E80ES preamp) running full range on my JBL L36's or 4312's and later on Monitor Audio Silver 8i's.

To try and get a significant upgrade on my budget, I started by looking at good quality vintage gear and found I could buy the A-88 (on my budget!) and run it as a power amp using the 0.6v inputs on the front (strange place for inputs!?). The price was great and really sweet sounding!

I auditioned this amp through some vintage Klipch towers. The amp had absolutely no background hum or hiss and the realistic sound of the drums and acoustic bass blew me away!

Back in my system, holy crap what an improvement in overall sound! Still using the Sony ES premap and Cyrus CD player, I have JBL 127A woofers in the original cabinets for bottoms and Altec 800hz horns and original 70's compression drivers on top (driven by the A-88). My active crossover is set to about 850hz.

I have been playing this combo for about 2 weeks now and am working through my favourite music "re-discovering" it. The realism this amp added to my Altec horns is amazing.

My only glitch has been running the amp at my house that I get some low level high pitched sound which may be connected to my bi-amp setup. Ian was extremely helpful and responsive in helping me troubleshoot and suggest possible solutions. We have since tested the amp and still found it to run dead quiet.

Thanks for the help Ian and for an affordable excellent sounding tube amp!

[igrant]

Hi Bernard,

It has been great dealing with you and I look forward to hearing your system one day, the A-88 thru Altec horns must be amazing

I'm sorry we couldn't sort out your hum issue in your house (yet . The offer still stands for me to come over and do some of live sound tricks to see if it can be resolved. Any luck with the last round of suggestions to sort out your sytem/house electrical noise?

It is fine with me to disuss it here, if you have time to write it out. Other running basically a PA system in their living room may learn or get ideas too

Ian

[VintageToo]

Thanks Ian. No change other than it is louder some days or times of day. It was this way with three different power conditioners. I still need to step through a shutdown of circuits in the house to see if the sound drops out.

By the way, the components I'm putting together are actually more or less just a home built Altec Model 19 bi-amped. Same sectoral horn but a compression driver that goes down to 800hz instead of 1200. The final choice of woofer will be a JBL E145-8 instead of an Altec 416-8B. I understand the Altec goes lower but the JBL is a tighter cleaner sound.

I think the DBX active crossover is a weak point in my setup so will look to either the original Altec passive crossover (which has some attenuation on it) and power it with the A-88 or buy/build a fixed point active crossover.

Which ever, the horn and driver are from about '73 and they mate beautifully with tubes. And I still haven't tweaked the bias to see what I get there!

So much tweaking...so little time!

Have a good one,

Bernard

[igrant]

Did you get the house noise sorted? I just received our new Power Conditioner with an isolation transformer built in, might do the trick.


Ian
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[igrant]

Any luck with the RPF-120?
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