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Romy the Cat wrote:

I always was “concerned” about those large high voltage triodes: 211, 845, GM70….  They kind of different… The 845 always was brutal and not elegant, 210 was elegant but not sophisticated, and the GM70 was sophisticated enough but no one build any serious performing systems with this tube.

It is not that I am contemplation the GM70 – I relay have no use for such an amplifier - but this event again made me to think about the sound of those high voltage triodes like 211, 845, GM70.

What I feel that those large high voltage tubes trade the brilliance of the details for the size of the presentation. It is not only the “elephant sound” but also the “elephant color”. The elephants are mostly grayish, so the 211, 845, GM70….

Honestly, I do not have my personal experience of teaching the 211, 845, GM70 amps to sound correct. All that I have is an experience of listening of many amplifiers with high voltage triodes. Perhaps they were made improperly, perhaps used wrong drivers, perhaps people did not know how to use those out tubes, or perhaps the OPT were wrong. There are many other reasons why the amps could eat details. I also suspect that to filer out the over thousands volts of GM70 people forced to employ paper and oil capacitors. Paper and oil capacitors dry out sound and eat the sonic nuances very aggressively. They do work in speakers crossovers but they behave very poorly anywhere else. Anyhow, I do not know the real reason I juts know the result.

Now, let look at the installations what I heard the 211, 845, GM70. They all were not the flea power minded installations with “large minded” speakers but they all imploded the flea-capacity acoustic systems. It is well know that I do not have a lot of respect to DIY community and the speakers they produce is even worst then anything else they do.  I have seen people build crazy 1100V amplifiers and run them against the Avantgard Duo, against Verity Parsifal or against the home brewed single driver back-loaded crap. The point is that the people who were impressed with the presentational mannerism of those 845 or GM70 (and partially the 211 that has much less the “elephant effect”) were looking for their amplifiers override the misery of their acoustic systems. The fact that they were loosing the delicacy, details and tonal fragility were completely irrelevant to them because their loudspeaker were not able to handle it to begin with.

Perhaps I am incorrect and there is out there an interestingly performing GM70 amp. There are almost excellent performing 211 amps. So, what is it: voltages? Tube? Implementation? The Moronity of the builder? Go figure…

In the end it is my strong feeling the “size” of playback presentation should be handled ONLY by the effort of acoustic system and it’s relationship with a listening room. The imbed the “largeness” into amplification is wrong…or perhaps less desirable… or perhaps I did not see any good examples how it might be done properly…
 
Rgs,
Romy the Cat

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