I am looking at a DIY built EL-84 amp built on the RH84 circuit that has the Tamura output transformers and power transformer. I want to buy another SE tube amp, but nothing that doesn't have quality parts and more importantly, quality iron. I have read that the RH84 circuit is a good one. Thoughts?
How good is the Tamura TamRadio iron?
- Thread starter MWalt
- Start date
My issue with a lot of that iron concerns the secondary winding that is 600 ohms with a tap at 8. That's a ton of extra copper that you don't want/need and it will come with issues that could otherwise be avoided with just a single 8 ohm secondary. Radio transformers also typically don't have a whole ton of low frequency bandwidth.
Are you talking about the Sony TC-500a outputs?
Thanks paul, I thought it might be.
I was under the impression that in spite of the 600 ohm winding, these OPTs were considered rather good.
Paul, I have a thought. I have outputs from three different vintage Japanese tape recorders that were pretty common and were probably frequently cannibalized for their iron. These parts can frequently be found on eBay. They are the Sony TC 500 family, the Akai/Roberts M8 and the Concord 880. The Concord is probably the least familiar to this group is/was a stereo deck that used 16A8 (6BM8 variant) output tubes. It might be a good public service to get some objective measurements of these transformers onto the internet. Being local, shipping to your house and back would be inexpensive by regional mail.
I'd be happy to send you a pair to test, but I'm not sure how far you are. I'm located in CT.
Best,
Jonas
Both John and I are just up the road a bit from Paul, so between the two of us, we should be able to provide local delivery for some iron for Paul to test.
Should anyone wonder why mid April and not sooner. I always enjoy my meetings with Paul and I would like to help in the testing. It should be both fun and educational for me. If these were normal times I would head down to Paul's place whenever he had some time available. Times aren't normal now. By mid April, my vaccination should be effective and it will be a bit safer for this old guy to go out and about.
If you have the Sony (or Akai ) transformers and are waiting for the test results before using them in a project, don't. There are enough favorable reports to recommend their use. There is always going to be something that is better.
John
If you have the Sony (or Akai ) transformers and are waiting for the test results before using them in a project, don't. There are enough favorable reports to recommend their use. There is always going to be something that is better.
John
Case in point - I'm using TC500a iron in my Darling 1626 amp and it sounds fabulous with my Heresy X's.
I've used them many times, I think they sound as good as anything you can buy on the market without spending crazy money (monolithic magnetics, ISO, etc). They used to be a well hidden secret, but now many are chasing them and thus used tc500a units on ebay are bringing a good bit and shipping them is a total pain.
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