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In the TAS that I bought because the Lamm ML3/LL1 review I found Jim Smith add about a new Engström & Engström Lars amp from Sweden. Jim tells the story about the Engströms and about the 20 Lars’s rules that reportedly assure “good sound”. This is a bit pathetic and reminds me the story about the Lamm’s famous “mathematical model of human hearing”. Any single designer have his own 20 rules that he/she feel assure best results. I am not a designer but even I have my rule in Miltiades and in Macondo. I understand that Jim need to sell the mystery and the fact that Atlántida was destroyed because they did not follow the rule #18. However, I have a different take on it. If Jim willing to convert the funny 20 Lars’s rules into a marketing product, like he did with his “31 Secrets to Better Sound” then he must innumerate the 20 Lars’s rules and let Lars as people or lest Lars amp performance to defend the validity of the approach. Otherwise it sounds too cheap.
Saying that, the Engström & Engström’s amp might be interesting. It is not that I would have any use from them. The Lars amps are 3 stages SET with contemporary Czech production 300B and somewhere around $93K price tag. In my mind it is juts expensive single channel DSET – I see ANY single SET amp as a DSET amp. The impute impedance of 5K is a bit alarming. There are plenty of tube preamps with 1K output impedance – how will they drive this Lars I do not know. It is not a big deal to change the loading resistor but why someone would need to pay $93K and then do that? The fully balanced driver sage is a very good sign. Even I am NOT a fun of Innerstage transformers but I do like the option to flip polarity. Did I mention that this option must come with remote control?
The Lars cry on this web site:
http://www.thelars.se/
… about a absence of feedback in their amp is a bit funny. They use a pentode as a driver; inner-feedback is a definition of pentode. I also would like do not use intentionally feedback but so zillion people out there, so to bring it as some kind of unique feature is a bit funny. The frequency response at 1dB from 10Hz to 40 kHz, again, I very much convinced that it is not at full 20W power. Someone need to make all of those people to shut up, stop to post irrelevant numbers and present them as venture.
Anyhow, here is a new amp. They claim that then they get 20W from 300B, OK.
I think that some of the people with kids and dogs would find that acrylic condom that they put above tubes useful. Still, I personally feel that the people who pay $93K for a pair of amps would find different ways to isolate pets a kind from the amp. For $93K the amp can come with a personal slave who will be guarding the tubes with own hands. In reality I feel that all of those protective and decorative screens as many companies use is a bit cheap and very none-useful, even those that use tubes around the tubes as a tunnel cooling. I can see that some kind of Morons in 2-3 year will sale the specials cleaning solution to clean plastic over the Lars amps . The cover does not look like glass but white plastic is what I would stay very far from. I hope that those plastic condoms are removable….
Sure, I did not hear the amp, but I kind of not interested in full range amps. I might do another day my Cetla 19 project and will have a full range speaker, juts to be like everyone else…. he amp is most likely sounds fine, this is why Jim took it under his umbrella. Somebody need to manufacture some kind of stand for them with some kind of new sales notion – like antigravity levitation platform. Sure it will be just a piece of a wood with a knob on a nail, not connected to anything but at least it would give to marketing people opportunity to write that by turning the knob under the Lars amp the proud Lars owner can compensate that fact he the 300B is losing electrons on cathode while working. I bet it will be the Mr. Engström’s design rule #21: the mass of election emission must be compensated by no-feedback gravity displacement….
Rgs, Romy teh Cat
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