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Old 18th Jan 2008, 2:24 am   #20
mastermanx2001
Retired Dormant Member
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: London, UK.
Posts: 366
Default Re: Quad 2 Valve power amp questions

Hi Cformat, I pretty well agree with all you say, I may have given the wrong impression, I have owned these Quad II amps for more than 30 years, but not used them for more than 20 years. I have also tried many other amps over the years (including Quad 303, 405-2, transistor Radfords, Sugden etc etc.), another favourite is Radford STA25 which does drive the my Quad ESL 57s nicely and I have been using this quite a lot over the years. I am not interested in trying to get much more power out of the II, it seems fine as it is. However I am interested in trying the GE 7581A/KT66 firstly to preserve the GEC KT66s, secondly to reduce the loading on the mains transformer. I understand that Quad at one time supplied GE 7581A/KT66 (this is marked on the valve), so they must be OK. These days my Hi Fi front end is the PC with a good sound card. I feed the outputof this direct to the Power amp, not even a volume control potentiometer in-between. It seems to work very well.

I found the same with concerts, some years ago I went to a jaz concert that was recorded for broadcast later. The sound where I was sitting was reinforced with some not very good equipment. some time later, I heard the FM broadcast of the concert over my ESL57s and it was far better than the so called live experience. Best regards, Paul. PS if you like the ESL57, you may like the B&W DM4s, I find them a bit more practical and still very good.

Last edited by arjoll; 18th Jan 2008 at 10:09 am. Reason: remove unnecessary quoting
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