[joebog1]

Yes tritone I have used damper rings. Read the advertising!! Ones costing as much as 50 quid work much more gooderer than 20 quid ones. A fellow that brought me an amp for repair had them stuck all over the glassware in the amp. After careful examination I discovered that ordinary hydraulic "O" rings even triple the output power of your 1960 Vauxhall, if you fit them to the car radio!!! They prevent punctures as a sideline as well. Well you dont want punctures in your whitewalls, do you?.

The bloke was convinced they worked, I couldnt tell any difference.

PJL, I did post the article link, as has been pointed out. I am quite fascinated by Joseph Marshall's designs, as he goes to great lengths to get as close to perfect as was possible in the early to mid 1950's. Components have improved probably 1000 times since then, yet he achieved superb results with carbon resistors and paper capacitors. He did use Acrosound transformers though in his output stages, so even in todays terms they are very hard to beat. Being a bit of a perfectionist myself, I have decided to build myself one last amplifier, and have decided on his last ( that I could find ) design, namely the Laboratory Golden Ears. I have a quite considerable collection of articles from all over the world on amplifiers and preamps, but the knowledge on this forum is surely much greater than magazine articles.
I started with winding myself a set of transformers with the last of, or nearly so, the best bits and pieces I had laying around.
I did design and wind transformers of all types for 40 years or more, so I made the best effort I was capable of, and ended up with two 250 watt stacks of iron ( 5% Si GO ) so running them at 50 watts should prove quite nice. They are 9 section 5 Pri and 4 sec with staggered interconnects to balance out the DC resistance as far as possible, without going to the lengths of partially winding the transformer with resistance wire to achieve "perfectly balanced resistance".
Back to the forum:
I asked the question to get as many opinions, and as much advice as possible. There is no such thing as too much information, especially when it comes from experience. Also, you never know that somebody hasnt already done what I am attempting to do.
I have bogged up the chassis, and am just waiting for the weather to settle down to paint the chassis, and as its only a couple of days building to complete the amp and power supply, I will need a preamp to see how it works. Driving a superb amplifier with an oscillator doesnt sound too inviting for long term listening. I do have some sand preamps here that I can use, but I dont like the idea. The present amplifier I use, has a built in phono stage using pentodes for the mag input stage, and it has hum problems. My own fault as I previously stated by building it into a single chassis with the power stage, and the power supply, all on a steel chassis. The power amp itself is extremely quiet, but the phono stage sucks, even though its inside a steel screen under the chassis, has DC heaters, and valve covers in an attempt to shut the hum down. I used 6BR7 pentodes and selected the quietest ones I had in my stash of about 25. SSooo that led me to more reading and study to find
"The Ultimate" audio system. Im 65 now, half deaf, have very poor frequency response, but can still discern good sound from bad sound. And in any case my kids will inherit the amp and a few thousand LP's along with the rest of my audio clobber.
Just in passing, I use a set of Tannoy Cheviot speakers, and an interesting article in Hi-Fi World November 2017 is good reading. Tannoy have re released them and you can purchase a set for the paltry sum of 5,199.98 pounds sterling. ( Whats the 98 pee for?, the sticky tape on the packing cases? ) I bought mine for 100 bucks aussie, but I did have to fit new surrounds, as is the case with Tannoys after a few years in Australia.

I will keep you up on developments,
Joe