October 2008 Bottleneck meet

We held our meeting at Fritz's place in Newark, Delaware.

 

Frank also took pictures that you can view here.

 

 

We've held a number of meetings there and I always enjoy his listening room. Even better, he has a room off to the side where we can line up the speakers that are not in action at the moment.

 

 

We first listened to Doug's (PakProtector) TX coupled linestage, with 6S4P-EV triodes( CCS-ed LTP circuit ), balanced( and SE ) outputs along with his rebuilt Heathkit W6m push pull amps.

 

Here is the underside of the line stage.

 

 

 

Below you can see Doug's amps driving Frank's Accuton based speakers which you can read more about here. The workmanship of Frank's speakers amazed us all.

 

 

 

We then listened to Steve's pair of 2 way towers with Tangband 6.5" and the Vifa D26 neo tweeters. I really liked these speakers and the TBs are supposedly 92db. They handled Flight of the Cosmic Hippo very well.

 

 

 

By the way, in the above photo hiding behind the towers you can see Fritz's Stromberg Carlson speakers which I believe are horn loaded. Fritz runs them with a Fostex tweeter and I would like to hear more of them at some stage.

 

On to the first of Joel's amps, the EL34.

 

 

Here is another photo where it is driving the Dayton BR1 speakers.

 

 

and a photo from above where you can see the motor run cap sticking out from the side. Now this is my style of building!!

 

 

We also listened to his Akido linestage.

 

 

Below we can see my 12B4A amp driving Steve's Seas based 3 way speakers. Doug is bringing his linestage into the picture while Fritz is messing with the Conrad Johnson CD player.

 

 

Towards the end of the day we tried a Sony Playstation as the source. If you look closely you can see the remote control at the end of the cord.

 

 

 

 

Below on the right, you can see Joel's Spud amp and to the left of it, John's 45 amp housed in an Ikea box.