Never heard of Feliks-Audio before

Yeah, I’m not really a fan of the idea of letting stuff burn in without being there. If burn in is a thing, and people agree it is with tube amps, I’m along for the ride.

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exactly! and my wife would kill me. She is paranoid, about these things.

What, like would it explode or catch fire if you left it on alone? I can understand that, I think I’d be paranoid too. ^^

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of course it´s a thing, heating it up a while before you listen…

so you are a casual gamer? - me too. Prefer to chill in a campain and ditch online battles with young screaming kids

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The only competitive games I enjoyed were Titanfall and Splatoon, and Splatoon doesn’t even have voice chat. I was currently playing through The Surge, a Dark Souls-type game and Resident Evil Code Veronica. I’d consider myself casual in the sense of being noncompetitive, but hardcore in terms of all the different kinds of games I enjoy.

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oh the last games are years back
sold my PS3/4 maybe 2 years ago - was more into grand turismo with all periphery stuff and worked on squeeking out the best times and the uncharted was fun

Cod and Crysis over many years on PC
Grand Theft Auto 3,Vice, 4…

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Found this one by William Murdock

Wow if the LD is so expensive due to shipping and taxes, you’d be crazy not to go with the Echo then, besides it’s alot nicer looking too. Love the Wood Sides, also one of the few tube amps that run a toroid and keeps the round look in the design (as opposed to making it a square box around it).

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Tis what they all say, Tuba is a really good amp though from the looks of it.

Oh also, it’s super duper unlikely the thing would catch fire, likeliest thing to happen is that if there is an over voltage, the transformer might burn insulation and short, and that tends to blow the fuse quickly. Less likely is that a resistor suddenly fails, but usually when a resistor gets old they tend to resist more (If Carbon) or open (If Wire-wound), but a brand new amp isn’t likely to do that though. Even less likely is that the filament inside the tubes burns out but usually that just removes that tube from the circuit since most heaters are done in Parallel. And Even super less likely is that the Plate starts to turn red, but again, super unlikely given the specs of the amp (Voltage could never get high enough without the amp being damaged somewhere else first). I leave my DV on when I get new tubes, go to school and stuff, and come back, and it tends to not set the house on-fire, sounding great afterwards, usually play some white noise/pink noise for the heck of it.
(Found a neat discussion here on resistors and age Redirecting to Google Groups)

If you are paranoid about it catching fire while you aren’t staring at it, maybe buy an Over voltage Protection Circuit, my Furman has one set to 137V and it actually works, since I had an over voltage just yesterday and it instantly shut off everything and wouldn’t let me turn it on until the voltage went down. Great way to protect your amps, especially since most tube amps don’t have this type of circuit, although you can probably buy a cheaper one without so many outputs, just as many as the amount of gear you want to protect.

Oh also also, yeah:

Tubes tend to work their best after being properly heated for about 30-60 minutes in, even if their designation gives it a fast filament turn-on time, and even transistors in some cases if the heat-sinks are a bit over-sized, and theoretically even the transformer starts to work better too since it kinda evens out after an hour, but not fully since AC is still in it and if it evened out it probably wouldn’t work as a transformer if AC would stop alternating, but it evens out more compared to the initial turn-on and inrush current, and at least if the transformer hums, it tends to hum less.

Remember reading something of the like on the Bottlehead Forums about larger transformers taking longer to perform their best due to this, but don’t quote me on that though.

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DOES THAT MEAN IT CAUGHT FIRE BEFORE :crazy_face:

Good post, though.

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Almost, forgot to check if the - part of the Caps were to ground and the Resistors Almost Burned, but mostly just external coating smoke, the resistors thankfully still had a perfect 200 Ohm Resistance Each (Vishay Makes Some Reliable Resistors) and the capacitors still had perfect capacitance/voltage rating so they weren’t damaged ether.

True I was testing the amp after modification, but weird though since the ground wire was somehow cut/damaged, and the modification in question was replacing the potentiometer so I have no idea wtf happened there, either way the amp survived thanks to the reliability of the resistors/caps.

I’m really paranoid with the stuff I build so even if it costs more, I usually go with the part that increases reliability and with double or even triple whatever the recommended wattage rating is (So if a 5 Watt Resistor works, I’ll go 15W just for some overkill) just to make sure a resistor won’t fail due to heat, and usually test the amp open for about 1 hour to make 100% sure the thing won’t combust while I’m using it.

Seriously, even if it’s just a simple pot change, test it extensively and safely, literally ANYTHING can happen, saying this from experience.

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Anything can happen and they TEND not to burn the house down is a wide range of possibilitys :slight_smile:

Just kidding

Thank you for the inside and broading my horizon

I must confess going also after the looks,
cause I love good design and it has the higher WAF(wife-acceptance-factor) than a Bottle Head Crack build for exmaple, where cables come out in all directions. I have seen beautiful BC builds.

Both the Tuba and the Echo look so good and the thing has to be in our living room, between sofa and listening chair on a shelf. The stack with DAC (RME ADI 2 fs and ifi xDSD) to solid state AMP (THX AAA 789) sits right next to it. So a kind of smaller tube amp like the Echo is the way to go besides budget.

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Well there are some sexy Crack Amps if they’re built with some lovin’.


Oh also in this design, the last Output cap is done using 3 75uF Film caps in parallel, which is a pretty good idea if you want a high uF film cap at the end of your Power Supply. Honestly, the amp looks amazing and has some high end stuff inside (idk why he didn’t replace the diodes with Cree Schottky or Vishay HEXFRED Diodes though, since they went through all that trouble).

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I like the name :rofl:

I’ve been looking at the echo recently.

I’ve seen some pretty decent reviews and I think I’d like the sound.

Time will tell if I pull the trigger.

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I know there are beautiful builds and I had planned one sinple myself

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I have the Echo Mark II arriving mg today! Excited to share my thoughts :slight_smile:

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@MRHifiReviews What tube amps do you have on hand at the moment that you’ll be comparing it to? I know you had the Elise and the Pendant at some point. Do you still have a Bifrost 2 as your DAC? I’m intrigued to hear how the Echo Mark II stacks up against the other popular sub-$1000 options like the Hagerman Tuba, BH Crack, Quicksilver, SW51+ etc…

I already have an SW51+ on order to pair with my BF2 and Verite Closed. I’m tempted to try out an OTL amp as wel. The Echo has always tempted me, so I’m looking forward to reading your impressions.

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