Extreme = extremely happy!

[Guest sacd lover]

i still like my Slam a lot. i'm trying hard to not trade up to an Extreme. stupid hobby

The PPX3 SLAM is still an excellent sounding amp. Do you have any 6gu7's? A simple tube change and you can make the amp sound new and exciting all over.

Hey .... I see phergus25 joined.

[Dusty Chalk]

so you work for Single power customer service now? I had the raptor almost a month before jude got his and further to any "user" received his, and dont get me started on the lunchbox,or b-52. point is I dont work for Ray so any questions anyone has I tell them to go to Ray and answer.

dude your cool and all but if later I heard you have more in SP then just a customer I would not be surpised at all, dude no one and mean no person who is just a customer ever posted so much shit about a company, come on man........ stop the bullshit, i am not the only one here who thinks it.

I wouldnt call you a shill but I would say your the customer service tech..lol

Dude, you are a complete and utter RSA shill, this is just pure unadulterated irony coming from you.

[Guest sacd lover]

Nice decor Earl! You're a fan that's for certain. Of course, in the south we always try and do things above and beyond. Call it a fans version of an arms race.

Wow nice ..... SEC heaven.

[KenW]

Wow nice ..... SEC heaven.

A friend reworked his basement into that masterpiece. Some great gameday parties to be sure. Really wish it were mine. Unfortunately, the wife approval factor isn't there for me. She prefers a more traditional look to the home theater area. Can't understand why she wouldn't be chomping at the bit to have so much glorious orange to enjoy!

[philodox]

What is it that makes these transformers so amazing versus a custom hand wound transformer?

I really am interested...

The reason I ask is that if there is no strong reason to use the Plitrons versus a hand wound transformer, Mikhail could wind his own or get one of his workers to do it and possibly pass cost savings along to his customers.

[tkam]

Except when you factor in all the labor cost is there really any savings to pass on??

[Guest sacd lover]

I really am interested...

The reason I ask is that if there is no strong reason to use the Plitrons versus a hand wound transformer, Mikhail could wind his own or get one of his workers to do it and possibly pass cost savings along to his customers.

There reason he chooses to use the Plitrons over everything else, from my understanding, is performance. The reason is not cost because he can get other transformers much cheaper. However, Plitron has notified buyers they are moving all production to China and raising their prices .... in the future. So he may be forced to go elsewhere for the ultra high quality transformers. I have heard him mention winding his own transformers. However, I cant see this at this point. The actual time it takes to build the amps combined with frequent re-hiring / training of his workers is one of the main issues slowing production down. Imagine having someone trained to do the transformers that suddenly quits. What happens to QC and how much time is lost hiring and training another employee? What happens to production?

Secondly, if I find a way to cut costs while providing equal quality the money goes in my pocket; that is business 101. Plus, like tkam, I dont see where winding his own would be advantageous with US labor costs and employee benefits packages what they are. Anything is possible with Mikhail though. He can engineer and build virtually anything.

[philodox]

Secondly, if I find a way to cut costs while providing equal quality the money goes in my pocket; that is business 101.

Bad business 101 when dealing with knowledgable customers... I do understand your other points though.

Plus, like tkam, I dont see where winding his own would be advantageous with US labor costs and employee benefits packages what they are.

Labour would be more costly, but I don't think it is actually all that difficult or time consuming. Given what the Plitrons cost I would imagine there would be significant savings. What I don't know is if hand wound transformers would be better or even equal the Plitrons...

[KenW]

The actual time it takes to build the amps combined with frequent re-hiring / training of his workers is one of the main issues slowing production down. Imagine having someone trained to do the transformers that suddenly quits. What happens to QC and how much time is lost hiring and training another employee? What happens to production?

Ah...I see. I also feel like a real jerk at the moment! [

[Guest sacd lover]

Bad business 101 when dealing with knowledgable customers... I do understand your other points though. :)Labour would be more costly, but I don't think it is actually all that difficult or time consuming. Given what the Plitrons cost I would imagine there would be significant savings. What I don't know is if hand wound transformers would be better or even equal the Plitrons...

We going to have to disagree on the first point. If you can make an equally good part for less money and increase your profit margin .... that is good business. The consumer is losing nothing because the quality is equal. Moreover, just how does this knowledgeable consumer know what the cost of manufacture of an in-house product would be? You might guess the parts cost but what about the labor, start up costs, the employee benefits package, SS, taxes, worker efficiency? You surmise it would be cheaper but do you really know that? If it is less expensive ... is there a large savings, little savings or no savings but some other adavantage. If the products transformer is built in-house vs the use of a well respected outsourced transformer does the consumer have the same faith in the product .... and does the product unltimately have the same attractiveness to the buyer?

When you are sometimes short on employees or suddenly have to replace and train employees .... any extra time consumption is to much. Adding one more manufacturing step makes no sense to me. Remember too, the plitron is an optional upgrade. He already uses cost effective transformers for the base amps. So, the plitron is an option offered to potentially increase the amps performance and reliability. If you want an amp with the less costly stock transformer you simply buy the base amp.

[aerius]

Regarding transformers. Winding a standard EI core transformer is one thing, with some practice you can do it by hand with some fairly basic & inexpensive tools. Winding a toroid? Good fucking luck doing it by hand, you're a lot better off sourcing them from a company which has the expensive specialized tools & machines for making them. Doing it in-house makes no sense unless you have the volume & money to buy the winding equipment which costs major bucks, in other words unless you're cranking out tens of thousands of them it ain't worth thinking about, and even if you are it still probably ain't worth it. Chances are Plitron and the other donut winders can still do it cheaper & better than you, they've been doing it for years and it's all they do, plus they have the volume. Unless you want to make something really exotic like amorphous colbalt core toroids there's no real point in winding your own donuts.

[Guest sacd lover]

Regarding transformers. Winding a standard EI core transformer is one thing, with some practice you can do it by hand with some fairly basic & inexpensive tools. Winding a toroid? Good fucking luck doing it by hand, you're a lot better off sourcing them from a company which has the expensive specialized tools & machines for making them. Doing it in-house makes no sense unless you have the volume & money to buy the winding equipment which costs major bucks, in other words unless you're cranking out tens of thousands of them it ain't worth thinking about, and even if you are it still probably ain't worth it. Chances are Plitron and the other donut winders can still do it cheaper & better than you, they've been doing it for years and it's all they do, plus they have the volume. Unless you want to make something really exotic like amorphous colbalt core toroids there's no real point in winding your own donuts.

This is exactly what I was thinking. Let the specialists do the job. With the cost of dedicated tooling, the volume buying power of a large business and the years of manufacturing experience they can just do it better in most cases.

[justin]

There is about 2000 feet of wire inside each Aristaeus transformer, I would not want to wind that myself

[909]

That?s only 24,000 feet or 288,000 inches.

At 3 seconds an inch, it is 864,000 second or 14,400 minutes.

That?s only 240 hours or just 20 hours an amp. It?s feasible.

[Dusty Chalk]

That's assuming you get it right on the first try.

[deepak]

I'm a little worried why you took the time to calculate that...

[909]

For the most part it?s pretty simple and quick calculations. I doubt it took me more than 180 seconds and I was curious to know how long it would take to make one per each amp. It was also my 909 post here.

[Guest sacd lover]

Back on topic .... the amp sounds great. Using the low gain 6080's on the outputs you can put just about any previously recognized gain tube in this amp .... tuberolling possibilies abound. The one thing that is different about this amp or the output tubes is warmup time. The amp seems to need a good 15-20 minutes before the sound opens up. In contrast, with my 5687 amps I usually start listening almost immediately.

In the meatime we anxiously await post 1818.

[Bob_McBob]

Now if only my amp would ship .

Same

[hungrych]

Join the club!

[postjack]

I'm really looking forward to a comparison between the Extreme and Extreme Platinum. Earl, is it true that you ordered a Platinum recently? So you can do a comparison for us? Before the 31st?

[Guest sacd lover]

I'm really looking forward to a comparison between the Extreme and Extreme Platinum. Earl, is it true that you ordered a Platinum recently? So you can do a comparison for us? Before the 31st?

Yes I have both and I will try to do a comparison.

I hope to get my second 2c51 adapter soon so I can compare them with identical tubes in identical setups. So far .... I am thrilled with the sound from either amp.

Extreme Platinum

Extreme Standard

[postjack]

Oh, you already have both! Fantastic! I remember now seeing the pictures over at the other forum.

Looking forward to hearing your impressions.

[Guest sacd lover]

This isnt a very good pic .... but here is a reworked Supra-XLR made into a Supra-Extreme XLR.

Very Nice ....

[tkam]

Received a USPS delivery confirmation number from SP, so it looks like my long awaited amp has shipped