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Old 18th Jan 2008, 1:12 am   #19
Cformat
Retired Dormant Member
 
Join Date: May 2007
Location: West Sussex
Posts: 18
Default Re: Quad 2 Valve power amp questions

Hi Paul of course I am tempting fate here so I am tyhking this post with my finhgs crossed! But I have very happily used my Quad 2s almost continuously since I bought them second hand in 1969. I have of course tried a few newer amps over the years, but in the end I have always returned ‘home’ to Mr Walkers grey doorstops. I do though have a pair of new (1970) ELS57s to go with them, and I find this antique combination (driven from a startlingly recent Audio Research LS7) pretty much all that I want for a bit of acoustic Jazz or nice Classical. Actually the Hi-Fi system sometime sounds rather better that some concerts I've been to, because of poor acoustics or Bl..dy modern PA systems.

Like GrimJosef though I have updated the beasts with some small mods and newer components. A long time ago I replaced the cathode bypass caps with something new and 100UF, the adjacent cathode resistor was replaced with a big ceramic thing. The HT smoothing got a couple of 47UF across the (I thought wrongly) paper-in-oil boxes, and the rest of the caps replaced mostly with expensive non-polarised yellow things we used at work. Metal film resistors and some silver plated Teflon wire was fitted in odd places (I did all this so long ago so that memory fails). Oh and the dreadful Jones socket was replaced with a nice and shiny gold-plated phono socket, and plated same binding posts for the speakers (the shame of it!). Original fuses though…

While many would grumble at the vandalism perpetrated on my own amplifiers (and I would not have a problem with that) I would though have a problem with changing the KT66s to something else. Change the KT66s? Change the KT66s? The Quad 2 IS KT66s! You know, that mains transformer always ran hot enough to poach and egg on it, always did, it was a feature! I suppose like Turville some have removed their GZ32s and converted to semiconductor diodes (well it was supposed to make them produce 30 Watts) That would give the mains transformer something to think about I imagine (and the KT66s), but with a reasonably standard and just lightly restored pair of amps you should have almost unlimited life (er, amplifier wise). Did I mention that most of my KT66s are original?

Seriously, welcome to what is a probably rather diminishing club. I suppose Quad 2s are rather like vintage cars, not everyone likes them but there again I don’t know what else there is to run a ELS57 on. And as far as the ELS57 goes I am still waiting for a significantly better speaker to be invented.

Weren’t those Rediffusion amps 100 Volt line units?

Cheers
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