kevin gilmore

I know what an es-1 sounds like because i have built the identical circuit with the same output tubes as the BH. It can be made to sound very good, but has a different presentation than the BHSE. If i was going to build an es-1 it would have fully regulated high voltage supplies and a servo for the output tubes to keep the bias stable without having to measure and mess with it. It would not be infinitely adjustable for every single kind of input tube or output tube as this is 99% the cause of all the trouble. aaron is not having a lot of luck getting people to publicly say over there what they have paid and what they are owed, so unless a lot of people come forward, this will just sink back under the noise level till things get really nasty.

You are kidding right??? The older stuff is much worse. MUCH WORSE... lots of air mounting of parts. Maybe in few weeks i'll post some of the really horror stuff. Its pretty much a reverse price thing. The more expensive it is, the bigger a piece of shit it is. Just remember it's art, not science.

I had not posted pictures of the es1 before. I will now. http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/es1inside1.jpg http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/es1inside2.jpg People: please stop calling me at 2am. REALLY. I need my beauty sleep. This is not my fault. This is not my problem. Believe me, over the last 3 years i tried to get mikhail to listen to reason...The more i talked to him the more he went over the deep end. Making lots of new stupid shit may be a fun thing, but it is no way to make money. So that we are all clear on this, none of the pictures i have posted are mine. They are from other people who have sent them to me or posted them. I have plenty of pictures of my own, but posting them would show temporary possesion of various items, and since each one is different it may point back to the person who owns/owned them.

hey i like that one... electrolytics so big at lower left, one is attached to the other with sticky tape because it will not fit into the board...

my bad... nate published the same kind of picture of a mpx3 http://www.pbase.com/n_maher/image/90556175/original.jpg look at the fet lower left corner this is not the picture i was looking for, i have one of an extreme... just have to find it. here are 2 pictures of the extreme. (NOT THE ONES I'M looking for) http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/spe1.jpg http://gilmore.chem.northwestern.edu/spe2.jpg the fet is in the upper left of the second picture, you can't see it...

First of all this should be moved to a public place because this behind the scenes stuff for more than 2 years is what caused the problem in the first place. Its a shellbrook labs fiasco all over again, except 100 times the amount of money. Fact: mikhail has well over $150k of customer's money Fact: mikhail has well over $150k of customer's equipment for repair/upgrades Fact: the singlepower extreme is DESIGNED TO FAIL. proof: nate recently posted inside pictures of a relatively new unit over at that other site. Notice the big pass fet in the lower left. See any heatsink? or see it bolted to the chassis? Nope. It dissipates over 10 watts. Where does all that heat go, into the circuit board. Look at the circuit board. Even at this very young age, significant amounts of burn on the board. This is bad for a number of reasons, one of which is that when repair is necessary, the whole circuit board needs to be replaced and taking that board in and out plus repairs takes a while. I've done it. Then you have to do what should have been done in the first place, add a heatsink and punch holes in the chassis to secure it to. Truely a miserable design. Any profit mikhail has made on selling the thing in the first place gets eaten up on the first repair. (if it ever gets repaired) After that he is loosing money on each one. Fact: The ES1 is designed to fail and malfunction. proof: the high voltage supply (pictures over there...) is a multiply filtered, but otherwise unregulated supply. Same thing with the bias supply. Now you can actually correctly design a power supply this way, but FOR ONLY ONE KIND OF output tube. Once you try to make a general bias supply to handle different kinds of output tubes the thing just has to drift like mad on a continuous basis. And the plate resistors... The board was designed for non-inductive wire wound resistors. Yet mikhail is using standard heater resistors bolted to the chassis. In fact the same resistors rudistor uses. They sound like shit. Fact: mikhail has been busy buying up all sorts of NOS tubes, mostly of whacky types no one, including him will ever use. A good deal on something that has no use is not a good deal. Plus the soon to come shove this tube down your throat design because he is the only one with the tubes in stock. Plus he is paying for the storage space to store all that crap. Fit and finish: Anything less than about $4k looks like it was done with a spray can by a 2 year old. If that's the finish mikhail wants, take the stuff to any nearby automotive body shop and have a decent finish put on the thing. I would like to hear the 2 big singlepower fanboys here weigh in (pun intended) on the failure of their god.

NO. If the getter is still silver colored, then the vacuum is at least 1 x 10**-8 torr. This does not mean that there isn't crap in the tube. excess cathode material can get in between grids and such and that stuff is certainly conductive. Furthermore, even in a perfect vacuum (there is no such thing) there is a minimum distance at which 2 conductors will arc depending on the voltage between them. Lookup Paschens law. In fact some noble gas in the tube is a good thing. Most of you probably don't know that for at least the last 10 years, all incandesent light bulbs, no longer have a vacuum in them, but rather are filled with argon gas. Much faster to make lightbulbs that way. There are exceptions, but most consumer tube testers don't test at more than 250 volts with the exception of tube cap rectifiers.

The differences you are hearing between the 2 amps is almost directly the difference between the designs. 1) B52 is a SRPP OTL design with smaller value output caps than necessary to drive low impedance loads. 2) TTVH is a Single ended pure class A transformer coupled output. You can find a number of amplifiers built the same as above, and each would sound far more like similar amps of the same design than the alternative design. The distortion signatures are very different between the 2.

I'd love for someone to explain to me why they would mod the hell out of something like this instead of just buying something better, and certainly more reliable for the same amount of money. Or why apl doesn't stick all that crap in an external box and then run whatever data lines are necessary in an appropriate manner.

NO... NO... NO... Not the least of the problems is the plate cap on the top of the tube. You will have to use adapters. Whether this tube is capable of being driven in grounded grid operation is unknown as is the biasing... And any possible compensation.

Justin should be able to do better than a 58 year old hag with 4 face lifts and 3 boob jobs...

But then it would take 500 years to charge...

Someone buy it and send it to mikhail. He likes big caps... Perfect for DC fillament supplies.

The 2sa1968 is the ONLY p type device i have found that has a voltage greater than 600 volts. It is not a high power device. Its use is primarily focus applications for high-resolution CRT tubes, and we all know where that is going. So expect that devices to disappear soon. A fully dual tracking shunt regulated power supply with only n type devices is definitely very possible. But you need an isolation amplifier and a second set of +/-15 power supplies to drive the negative supply.

My original board layout is pathetic compared to the stuff justin did afterwards. Someone would need to do a new layout complete with ground plane and all that other modern good stuff. Don't try and build the original power supply. Go with a BH supply set for + and -350 volts. Which requires dual high voltage secondaries. Oops forgot about the 2sa1968 as the current source. I'm using something else for current sources these days. That is a 900 volt part anyway. The pass fets can be anything rated at 600 volts or more. Pretty much anything works...

2sa1968's not needed for kgss. Think KGBH power supply. Front end fets can be matched from single devices if necessary, but lsk389 is a wonderful part.

The extra capacitors in the signal path part is not necessarily true. It can also be done with the same number of tubes, and slightly higher distortion.

Capacitors in series are CAPACITORS IN SERIES no matter how you wire the power supplies that feed them. So 2 x 100uf /450 volt caps in series is the equivalent of 1 x 50 uf 900 volt cap. If all the caps are value C, then the total capacitance is C/n

Anyone that thinks tyll is even the slightest bit a normal ceo needs to think again. Evanna Manley has a much nicer chest, but evidently does not show it off anymore. The day tyll dresses up in a james bongiorno outfit is the day we have to run away screaming...

I'm 99% done with my 6.4 watt 532nm laser for my home christmas show. Finally a way to compete with the neighbors and their 5000 lightbulbs... (1.75 volts at 24 amperes) The 650nm laser should be done by the end of the week. (about 8 watts) The blue is going to be a bear...

All you have to do is either fill the center pin with solder, or remove it from the front and put in a black screw and nut.

Absolutely. But also custom. I have filament transformers for xray systems that sit at -60kv. The higher voltage they can withstand, the larger they get.

You can make a supply the same way as my original ac coupled tube amp. That is use a center tapped secondary, or in fact two seperate windings each of which rectified makes something like 400 volts with 450 volt capacitors. Then stack the two and make the bottom ground. Only issue is whether or not the transformer has enough isolation for the top winding to sit 400 volts above ground. Normally these transformers are rated at 1kv or more, so it is not a problem.

someone is paying attention...

Nate, why did you have to go and publish the schematics? Now ray will finally be able to finish his A10... (not a chance)