Carver Crimson 275 Measurements

[mhardy6647]

Is there water inside Amir's house? Man, I wouldn't wish that on anyone.

Youse tubeheads need to spend some quality time perusin' the rest of this site!
Pro tip: Try the "New Posts" button -- don't be afraid. It won't lead to hard drugs, like Class D... honest!
Would I lie to you?
Maybe just a little hit of Spin-o-rama. You can quit any time...

In seriousness, yes, @amirm is dealin' with some stuff at the moment.

 

[amirm]

Review and measurements just posted: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?reviews/

 

[Blumlein 88]

One wonders just how much of what is offered is 'market demand' driven, and how much deviation is allowed from a manufacturer's attempt to offer a 'wide range' of product, simply to pad the portfolio and satisfy everyone?

Few major manufacturers have existed in both camps, successfully. At least long term. McIntosh is probably the best example, having produced both tube and SS gear for as long as anyone can remember. In a way I am surprised that ARC has lasted as long as they have; they appear to be successful. They've carved out a niche, and mostly stuck to it.

AT one time ARC was seriously thinking about getting out of the tube business. This was evidently the plan in the late '70s, as witnessed their 'analog module' push, which was supposed to be a 'new' method of circuitry, combining the 'best of both worlds'. I don't know if anyone ever dissected one of ARC's 'modules', but most people who cared about it figured it was just a potted opamp, or FET, or something. Anyhow, the market balked (as I recall, 'influencer' Harry Pearson choked on one of them, and that was that). The company soon went back to tubes, more or less exclusively.

Counterpoint made a huge (and almost successful) push into SS/hybrid designs. One problem they had, from my perspective (FWIW), is that they started to make every kind of device at every price point they could think of, including delving into the then nascent digitial technology, at a time when the economy was not conducive to such a huge business expansion.

I know their preamps from the late '70s are still user serviceable, however the MOSFET gear is likely less so, and maybe not at all. One enterprising group attempts to keep them alive, offering 'drop in' transistor replacement circuits for key components not now available. Whether a Counterpoint owner would really want that is a question I can't answer. For a while, Michael Elliot (the designer of a lot of their gear), offered upgrades, but he left that scene years ago. As far as I know, Elliot pretty much dropped completely out of consumer hi-fi. I understand Conrad-Johnson bought the Counterpoint trademark, but never did anything with it.

Yes the analog modules in the ARC were potted op-amps. I knew someone with one, and it sounded quite fine. I owned some Counterpoint hydrid amps. I don't think you can get the output MOSFETs anymore. Both C-J and ARC at times made quite nice, powerful SS amps. But were still known for their tubes.

 

[Thermionics]

Interesting. I might buy a pair of their 10K/30W outputs and see how they hold up in my Williamson amps. If they're stable enough, it would be a good option for building a classic triode or UL Williamson.

Or I could hook you up with a pair of 9K/50W Stancor A-8054 that I was saving for a project...

 

[Zackthedog]

Or I could hook you up with a pair of 9K/50W Stancor A-8054 that I was saving for a project...

I'd LOVE to try them. Been wanting to for ages. Have spec'd out Peerless S-265-Q, Partridge .95, UTC LS-57, and several others. Can you PM me? It would be fun!

 

[atmasphere]

Even if surprising to some claiming to be knowledgeable in all things electronic and never hearing about tube amp soft-clipping no one has actually explained the reasoning for this characteristic in tube amps.
A limited bandwidth would explain the rounded corners at clipping.
I doubt that the supply rails are very stiff, so it could have something to do with load regulation and in that same area the load regulation when referring to the damping factor which in these amps is usually low, much like the user's expectations. (yes, I'm taking a shot at tube guys every chance I get.)

Someone surely knows the reason for it.

They do.

It has nothing to do with bandwidth. As I mentioned earlier, tubes have something called 'space charge effect' which is essentially electrons that build up as a cloud around the plate. This is a negative charge and so inhibits the tube from hard/immediate saturation as you see in semiconductors. The reason pentode amps have less soft clipping is because the suppressor grid drains off the electron cloud and returns it to the cathode. But it is not entirely perfect in this regard.

Space charge - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Because of this all tube power amplifiers exhibit a soft clipping character. The more they use feedback and if pentode power tubes are used, the more this is minimized, but its there nevertheless. I've yet to see a tube amp that does not soft clip unless there is either a design flaw (such as excess distortion arising in the voltage amp or driver prior to output tube saturation) or malfunction (as if the former were not exactly that ).

IMO/IME, soft clipping is really the only reason power tubes are still in production; IMO people tend to push amps a lot harder than they think! SITs are capable of this too but they are quite rare.

 

[Greg P]

...but hey, don't take my word for it! According to Frank Malitz:

New Bob Carver Crimson 275 Stereo Vacuum Tube Amplifier-Taking orders.$2495 Shipped. Made in USA.

Jimclarkstereo.com . Demonstration available North of Rockford, IL.. (815) 323 0898. Bob Carver sound for just $2,495! Seventy five watts per channel at a price that will drive the competition into feedback mode. Bob and his staff are working hard to birth this new product. We didn’t achieve...

audiokarma.org

"Here’s Bob Carver experimenting with the winding in case you thought that was hyperbole."

View attachment 175043

Now whatever that is he's winding, it ain't no output transformer. For Pete's sake...

...and note the claim for 130 watts RMS/ch. into 4Ω ......

 

[paulbottlehead]

That's not what I would expect a wound transformer core to look like.

EI transformers have rectangular winding windows, and you'd wind on a bobbin shaped to slide into that.

That looks a lot like a speaker crossover coil.

 

[paulbottlehead]

Somebody please correct me if I'm mistaken.

You are not mistaken.

 

[Doodski]

@MakeMineVinyl going from memory I don't remember the specifics on the equivalent BTUs but I do remember that what you said is true. So no reason to delete your post.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

@MakeMineVinyl going from memory I don't remember the specifics on the equivalent BTUs but I do remember that what you said is true. So no reason to delete your post.

I didn't delete it - I was going to edit it and instead hit 'delete' before I realized what I did. Ctrl-Z didn't get me out of that one, unfortunately.

 

[Doodski]

I didn't delete it - I was going to edit it and instead hit 'delete' before I realized what I did. Ctrl-Z didn't get me out of that one, unfortunately.

Hehe. I imagine you instinctively slammed the CTRL-Z command and hoped for the best... lol.

 

[MakeMineVinyl]

Hehe. I imagine you instinctively slammed the CTRL-Z command and hoped for the best... lol.

Yeah, and the post wasn't quoted in its entirety, so I couldn't copy 'n paste that back into a new post. I'm so used to multiple levels of undo/redo in all the other applications I use that its a shock when the browser just says 'what the hell are you trying to do'?

 

[Doodski]

Yeah, and the post wasn't quoted in its entirety, so I couldn't copy 'n paste that back into a new post. I'm so used to multiple levels of undo/redo in all the other applications I use that its a shock when the browser just says 'what the hell are you trying to do'?

RFLMAO.. The last software that I used that had a UNDO setting I think I set it for a thousand... lol.. It was a art program for painting on the PC. Now that is a UNDO function!

 

[Greg P]

Carver seems to me to be a lot like Sears, Roebuck. Both companies were great when they stuck to their basic competencies (high-power SS amps and hardware, respectively), but lost the thread when they started to futz around with other stuff.

Sears sold everything for a very long time, the Amazon of the mail-order world, including kits for entire houses until 1940 or so.

 

[BlackTalon]

Sears sold everything for a very long time, the Amazon of the mail-order world, including kits for entire houses until 1940 or so.

There are quite a few of their surviving catalog houses in a neighborhood not too far from where I live.

 

[mhardy6647]

Sears sold everything for a very long time, the Amazon of the mail-order world, including kits for entire houses until 1940 or so.

Our son-in-law's parents live in a Sears house in a college town here in the Connecticut River Upper Valley (that narrows it down ).
It's a neat house.

 

[MaxBuck]

Sears sold everything for a very long time, the Amazon of the mail-order world, including kits for entire houses until 1940 or so.

When I was in high school, we lived in a house built from plans provided by Sears, but constructed using locally sourced materials by local contractors. It was a pretty nice place.

 

[Greg P]

Do you know about Edgar Villchur's (Acoustic Research's) first loudspeaker, the AR-1 of the mid to late 1950s?

The AR-1 was the first commercial "acoustic suspension" loudspeaker. The AR-1's "tweeter" was the famous Western Electric (later Altec) 755(A) -- which, today, is worth far, far more than the AR-1 in which one might, if one were lucky, find one. The 755 is an 8-inch 'fullrange' (extended range) driver, which was used as the (for lack of a better word) tweeter to extend treble response of the AR-1.

The EV Leyton originally used an EV "Wolverine" LS-8 twincone "fullrange" driver as its "tweeter". The LS-8 is a nice little driver -- not in the same league as the 755A... but a nice little driver. I have... umm... a few LS-8s "in stock" here.


Here's one of the LS-8s installed in a really cheezy 'test baffle' at one point a few years back

Here's another LS-8 in situ as the midrange driver of the next model up from the Leyton -- the EV Esquire. The Esquire added an EV T-35B as a proper tweeter The Esquire is a darned fine sounding little loudspeaker... similar in performance to Klipsch's Heresy but without the screechy MR horn, a better-behaved tweeter*, and more bass.


... youse guyses pulled me off-topic... again!

________________
* For whatever reason, the T35B with EV's simple XO is far less ear-gouging (to me) than was the EV T35 in a Heresy with Col. Klipsch's XO. EV generally got better sound out of the T35 family members (e.g., EV coaxes that used them, as well as speaker systems) than other manufacturers who used them in their own designs.

I remember at 18 listening to early ARs in their booth in Grand Central Station (and wishing I had the money to buy a pair).

 

[Greg P]

Our son-in-law's parents live in a Sears house in a college town here in the Connecticut River Upper Valley (that narrows it down ).
It's a neat house.

Yes, spent a bit of time there some years ago!

They were good solid designs. Another world....