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Posted
Crazy elephant?! I'm "Super-cool baby elephant" dammit. :)

Nahh I'm still going with crazy... ;D

I asked for all black except for silver tube rings. Yep, boring. I just know that I'm going to be jealous of other better-looking color combos.

Needs moar silver!!

Hmm, maybe I can buy a Singlepower two-box chassis and put the BHSE inside?

Why not ask Mikhail about it...? I'm sure he could use the cash...:indra:

Posted
Forgive my incompetence here, but I thought tube amps were not supposed to be turned on without headphones plugged in :confused:

They shouldn't be run for long periods with out a load but it is ok to run them once and a while like that.

Posted

Pardon my additional ignorance, what is the ill effect of not plugging in a headphone? Surely the amp will be sort of "oh theres nothing plugged in, this is EASY, ho hum, I think I'll read the paper and put my feet up"?

Posted
Forgive my incompetence here, but I thought tube amps were not supposed to be turned on without headphones plugged in :confused:

Really not sure that this applies to many amps

OTL tube amps with capacitor output (Singlepowers, RSA, many others): All of these if they are built properly have a resistor load on the output to prevent the output capacitor from discharging into the headphones

transformer coupled amps: Not sure, do they require a load on the secondary? In the case of headphone amps, many of these may be 8-16 ohm outputs and already have a resistor load internally.

OTL tube amps, DC coupled: This is like the Blue Hawaii. A Stax headphone is a capacitor load anyway. I would think the feedback loop would count as a resistive load on the output of the amp.

Posted

As far as I know, for what an amp builder tried to explain to me, if you don't load the secondary of a transformer coupled tube amp, the tube output sees the primary as a load with just the impedance of the wire in the primary, so it's quite close to a short. The tube is asked to delivery way more current than it's designed to and will die soon. So for a short while you can run an OTC tube amp without a load plugged, but it's not a good idea doing so for more than a few minutes, unless you want to burn out your tubes prematurely.

For an hybrid amp, if the output devices are the transistors, not having a load plugged shouldn't be a problem. The transistors are still a load that the tubes would "see" despite you don't connect anything to the output.

Posted
Really not sure that this applies to many amps

Me neither, it was something I read here a while back. I don't recall if it was directed only at OTL or some other type, or all types. Again, you'll have to pardon my ignorance on the matter. It was more of a question than a statement, for my part.

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