[dave walsh]

Re my story about a similar sized but solid state amp at 427*, I wonder if Barretter's interesting comment [at 451] about high frequency reduction in the pre-amp [in that bread board creation] might have legs? How would that give a false impression? I'd assumed that the presence of tape hiss meant a very wide bandwidth but is the suggestion that this is misleading and it might well have actually been system [thermal] noise-within the Transistors? I know little about the subject though.

I can only say that [subjectively] the overall quality of sound produced by this " lash up" seemed extraordinary at the time. I made the comparison with the valve amp in the first place, because the HF end seemed to be in several bands there. I had been impressed in 1972 because there were at least three controls covering the higher end alone [not just bass and treble] and this seemed to confirm what I was being told. On the other hand, I'm often inclined to suggest that there is a lot of psychology [codology] involved in the listening process itself, just as we see with our brains, not our eyes and that's why I tend to "focus" on the content rather than the very highest "quality".

Dave W