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Old 10-18-2013, 03:39 PM
countingbackwards countingbackwards is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jerome W View Post
What I can say is that imho, the overall character of a tube amp, does not depend on the tubes used when it has been designed by a great designer .


Thanks for the detailed description Jerome - it is helpful to me as much as I expect it'll be helpful to others that will have similar questions, because the number of people who have heard the CC80 and CCQ on the same speakers is not very big, that's for sure!

One thing I thought that I'd point out, is that I'm not sure I *completely* agree with your bolded statement. While I agree that just knowing the tube type does not necessarily tell you what an amp will sound like, I see there being lots of different ways to skin a cat. A great designer might opt to make similarly designed amps, whose main sonic differences will be based on the tubes in use. This is akin to a car that's offered with a 4 cylinder or 6 cylinder engine...while the basic design is the same, the 2 cars will feel different, and that difference will be mostly (if not wholly) attributable to the different engines. The same can be said for tubes used in tube amps - sometimes a designer would *want* to display a tube's sonic attributes. My point - those might be great designers just as much as the one whose amp doesn't sound typical for the tube type, it's just a different approach.

However - your post clearly demonstrates that this is not the Shindo way - and I didn't expect it to be. I fully expect a Shindo-designed EL34 amp to have more liveliness and "swing" than any VTL amp, my concern is more for the differences between the Shindo EL34 sound and the Shindo KT88 sound, which if I get the CCQ I suppose I'll be well-placed to comment on. But as Jonathan pointed out and you are further supporting, Shindo's amps are designed far more intricately than most others, so knowing a single part in the chain won't tell you what to expect. For all I know, the CCQ might not share much at all in the way of design with the CC80 (they certainly don't look at all alike), so the tube question becomes poorly founded.
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