Hi everyone,
I've been living in Pittsburgh for the past 2 years for fellowship training. Yesterday for some reason I decided to google "Pittsburgh audiophiles", and I came across this forum. Never realized this wonderful city had so many people interested in audio, I'm so impressed.
Anyway, I've been interested in tube audio for about the past 12 years only, when a friend of mine in graduate school invited me over to bring some of my records and play them on his system - a Mcintosh MC225 with an old pair of Snell speakers. Kind of a life changing event. He advised me to buy an ST-70 on eBay and rebuild it. From there I built myself random kits and eventually settled on a 2A3 SET amp that I listened to for years before getting curious about other tubes. I've since tried building amps with 1626, 71a, 45, and 46 as outputs. I like tracking down older tubes, as it makes the listening experience (for me at least) more special. The rest of my system is a Garrard 301/Denon 103r, EMIA phono, slagle autoformers made from kit, sometimes a Darling amp with 12SL7 driver, sometimes a 46 stereo amp with 417a driver, and Supravox 215-EXC field coils in open baffles. My speakers are actually down for the moment, as I am awaiting delivery of a tungar power supply for the drivers, and am currently using a small pair of old B&W bookshelf speakers (forget the model number) I got for a steal back in the day. The system may sound a bit "exotic" on paper, but it's actually quite humble. The amps really only put out 0.75-1.5 watt, and the drivers at the end of the day are just single drivers directly radiating and not some huge multi-way horn system. My cabling generally sucks, cheap stuff from Target. No power conditioning.
Lately I've been selling off gear that I've been stockpiling over the years. And I gotta say, it's harder than I thought to be a seller. Either you're settling for bargain basement offers or getting killed by the shipping costs. I was able to raise enough capital to buy the aforementioned Tungar supply (from Line Magnetic, much cheaper than I thought it would be given how "trendy" the line is now). Next I would like to upgrade my plinth into something more "professional". The current plinth is a wooden Frankenstein my father and I glued together a long time ago. I lived in the UK a while back, and came across an ad for 2 Garrard 301's. I bought both of them and carried them back in a suitcase with me to the states. Since then I've heard better turntables and even own a Verdier Nouvelle Platine (that I plan to sell), but I don't think I'll ever move on from my Garrard given the history.
Ok, I've rambled enough, sorry. I would like to eventually meet other like minded audio enthusiasts, so please send me a note if you are interested in similar things (old SETs, field coils, etc). Feel free to check out my sparsely populated blog that I plan to add to more regularly:
http://eso200.blogspot.comThanks for reading!
Eric
