What does the Kel84 sound like??

[Primalsea]

The only amps I have herd recently using EL84 valves was a small Yarland Amp that a friend bought from Ornec and a Leak Stereo 20.

Has anyone herd either of these amps and a Kel84? If so would you be kind enough to advise using the other amp as a basis for comparison. If not, just some kind of indication anyway.

I'm thinking about buying a kit and just want a general idea of what it sounds like.

[BOONDI]

Hi there, I have heard a stereo 20 and wad el84 and they are both nice amps. If I had to pick one I would def go for the wad amp. It just seemed more musically correct and cleaner than the stereo 20. As always you may find the stereo 20 better, but if you can audition the wad el84 amp you may be pleasently surprised.....

There is another thread that has a little more info on it here...

http://www.world-designs.co.uk/forum...ead.php?t=1356

and


http://www.world-designs.co.uk/forum...ead.php?t=1342

Regards....

[Paul Barker]

Yes I have done the stereo 20 full rebuild journey, and I have also altered a stereo 20 to try and improve it using phase splitter from Morgan Jones' first book, but it's unredeemable. At the end of the day it's an colectable acutriment not a hifi amp of the quality of the present day valve amps.

KEL84 has interesting characteristics, it posesses a tone which is almost 300b like but doesn't quite go all the way, yet because it is push pull I believe it copes better with complexity of music than a single ended 300b wold, and it doesn't have the soft bass or rolled off trebble of many 300b designs.. I am not saying i would prefer kel84 over a se 300b, but it posesses similar characteristics. I prefered it over the 6550 push pull amps I was able to compare it with, though it is less powerful it does what it does with a better tone. It's nearly a baby 300b push pull but the el84 valve has a different sound characteristic to the 300b, though similar. In many ways the el84 is more faithful than the 300b. The el84 makes the best of the sound without altering it, the 300b swamps the sound with it's own character (if not carefully designed).

[Primalsea]

Looking at the circuit diagrams of both amps the WAD amp has a simpler circuit but it is well implemented. I like the idea of both channels having theie own valves. Each channel of the leak shares 1/2 of a ecc83 on its 1st stage. With the WAD not doing this crosstalk and noise floor should be reduced. However I cant comment on crosstalk from the selector switch as I have not seen it.

I would imagine though that most of the difference is in the transformers and it is likely that the WAD's are better as they were probably designed after people were more aware of what makes a good tranformer for an amp.

Has anyone taken any crostalk measurements of a WAD.

[Paul Barker]

Well I wouldn't count on the stero 20 having bad transformers, on the contrary it is said in the industry that age effects on the materials have made these vintage transformers sound better than we can reproduce today without waiting for the same aging process. Not to mension the use different dialectics. In fact Stereo20 output transformers may improve kel84 further.

Hmmm, steroe 20 transformers may improve the kel84 hey?

That sounds like a future experiment to me

If i can find some ill try them out.

graeme like you i have just built a kel84. i have posted in amp section. dos your mains thansformer get hot. my one is hot,can only just put my hand on it. good arnt thay. better than my leak stereo20 by a mile. ken

Yeah it gets hot.
I can leave my hand on it, but only just.
Its not hot enough to burn though.
As you have both a kel84 and a stereo 20, do you fancy trying the leak transformers?

Oh yeah, ive been listening for a couple more hours and yes, it is very good.
Is it just me, or do virtually every other band strugle to reach the recording quality of pink floyd?

[david counter]

you're just falling under the spell of Floyd played through valves using good speakers,
you have a system most people would die for, it can only get better