Well tom, good luck with the future!

The delivery d00d was the spitting image of Pete Townshend.

Reading Gearslutz makes my brain collapse into a black hole sometimes. I suppose we're all PhDs on the Internet, though.

There are certain places i just don't have the patience to read, and that is one of them.

That said, what specifically is over there collapsing your brain today?

The guy who wants an Eventide H8000 to use the Firewire outs with his AxeFX (which he does not actually own, of course, and has I can only assume never used) and the rest of everyone in the thread, except the people who have actually used an AxeFX.

I read it because it's so damn big there is actually worthwhile content on there, but... yeah. You've seen it, you know how it goes. Your reasoning re: that place is sound.

The Sneap forum is actually a pretty awesome resource, compared to Gearslutz. It's like a huge database of information for recording geeks/legit audio engineers.

In the last 2 days I have eaten gooey bone marrow out of a bone with a spoon, a cow tongue grilled cheese sandwich, and camels milk chocolate.

Feels cultural mosaic man

The guys there who actually stick mics on things know how to yield results. Obviously the stylistic focus is pretty narrow, but they are generally not gearsnobbish and know you can work on a fairly modest digital setup and make some slick stuff. I don't go there much these days because a lot of the content doesn't interest me- amp sims, drum samples, the stuff they listen to (modern metal with a side of Nickelback)- but there's stuff on there worth reading.




Also, I am discussing with our own Master Tinkerer commissioning a weapon of sonic oppression.

I've had an interesting revelation about power transformers and voltage multipliers. Cheap low voltage, high current toroidal transformer + voltage doubler = 50/60W amp for not much money

What do you have in mind for the toroidal? I haven't seen much in the way of high enough current specs to allow doubling for a 50w amp myself. I suppose it might be different in the UK for what is available?

In general though, with regards to transformer types of things, it seems to me that the "no free lunch" cliche might tend to apply. Whether you are stressing the components unduly, or adding noise(depending on what kind of voltage multiplication), in some cases the big expensive iron seems to me to just be the simpler way to get a good result.

Things are out of whack between us and the states. You guys have lots of people doing cheap EI trannys and we get cheap toroids for HiFi. I'd cut a ball off for a company like edcor to sell stuff over in euro land Also given they are pretty cheap over here you can strap two together and its still under half the price of what we have to pay for a hammond.

I've found what looks to be a decent 0-110,0-110 225VA toroid which should get me into pretty serious voltage territory. Still working out what kind of current demands I can put it through. As for noise, I'm not so worried as I will probably use capacitor multiplication to smooth the living fuck out of the DC anyway! Either way I think its at least worth trying. I have a spare OT I'm destined to never use and I can pick up a chassis for next to nothing. I'm shooting through the practicalities on the AX84 board now.

Do repoart back with what you find, and how it works out for you!

And yeah, i don't at all know why toroids haven't caught on as hard here as they have in Europe. I like the format, but right now anyhow, it just isn't worth trying to locate and use them, in comparison with the more readily available pile of traditional big iron.

One positive sign though, is that lots of bigger commercial manufacturers are starting to use them in their amps. IMO, this can only mean that soon-ish, stubborn old ass audio types in this country will start to come around, and go looking for/demanding cheaper toroid stuff suited for tube map applications here.

I most certainly will. In merlins power supply book he has two 0-45, 0-45 150VA toroidals with all on the secondaries in series hooked to a multiplier to get 450VDC at 450mA under load! I'm not entirely sure how that works but thats only about £30 worth of iron and an equivalent hammond EI tranny will cost pretty much three times that. Also since it doesnt have a 6.3V winding I can use another cheap toroid and run DC heaters!

If this multiplier stuff does work out then it'll be great as PX's cost sooooo much goddamn money and these cost fuck all. It think that people who are used to looking at EI's will wonder what the fuck all this shit in their amp is though

Having gone through the finer details over at AX84 I think I understand this. I wasnt taking into account the power factor of the rectifier to derive the current rating. For interested parties (Chris, knope pretty much haha) its this:

Current (A) = (VA of transformer / secondary voltage) * 0.5 * power factor. The 0.5 is because of the doubler. Typical power factor of a doubler is a pretty poor 0.6.
So for the tranny I'm looking at:
Current = 225/220 * 0.5 * 0.6 = 0.307 A

This is an underestimate as the power factor is a little better in reality so I can squeeze say 320mA at somewhere between 450 to 560V depending on load.
I've just found a place selling 25W (HiFi rating) OT's with 5K6 primaries for £25 so I can make something interesting for cheaps later in the year!

Now I see why toroid transformers are so popular among the guys in the know about hi-fi. They're cheap, and don't suck.

The down side is that you cant flip the chassis upside down and rest it on the transformers
I have an amp cradle anyway

Couldn't you just wrap the sumbitch in electrical tape or something?

Its more that EI transformers are usually so tall you can stand the amp up on top of them without bashing the valves on the desk.

Ahh...

Thick books are always an option for the brave though