Since you mention the Tor amps, have you heard them? Since i want to upgrade my Darkvoice to end of this year i was thinking of an Roger Amp because they are available in europe. Other thing is the Crack. Crack is a no brainer i guess, but its USA aswell, so taxes and shipping push up the price i guess.
Feliks Echo seems pretty good too.
Interested in this topic aswell.
I think I covered this in the Bottlehead Crack thread.
It’s still a good amp, better than a Dark voice, but it’s not particularly refined, doesn’t control the drivers as well as with the speedball. The speedball is a significant improvement IMO.
There are people who prefer it without speedball, so YMMV.
I have not, I was considering getting a Roger or a Balanced, but about the last thing I need right now is another <$1000 tube amp taking up desk space.
I believe @M0N has heard the roger, but I don’t believe it was for an extended period.
For point of reference, tube amps under $1000 I have on my desk right now.
Bottle Head Crack with speedball - would strongly recommend, it’s competitive with anything under $1000 with the right headphones
Haggerman Tuba - would recommend, would take it over the BHC if you prefer a dryer sound
SW51+ - competitive with the Tuba, at a lower price point, but not readily available
Eddie Current ZDT Jr - Only available used, great bargain at the price, would take the others over it.
Liquid Platinum - Good clean hybrid, not a big valve sound see my comments on it in the forum
MassDrop CTH - Ok for the price if you neeed a hybrid
Better than the liquid platinum? Blasphemy! lol actually curious on this one though. Honestly curious as to what people consider to be the best hybrid tubes based on budget.
I’ve heard and keep on hearing really good things about the Liquid Platinum. For a OTL i would go with bottlehead crack. I got the Darkvoice but i dont think it really competes with those
Never got to really use the Liquid Plat when I had one for a short time, but just bought a Hafler HA75 v1 that should be a pretty interesting hybrid to play with that I hope competes. Originally retailed for $1300, but can now be found in the $500 range here and there. It has a tube buffer circuit in the case enclosure with adjustable feedback and cross feed.
There’s a dial to adjust the level of negative feedback being used, which is what determines the level of ‘tubiness’ that comes through. The crossfeed is a control that lets you determine how much to allow the left/right channels to bleed into each other. This is designed to mimic listening to a pair of studio monitors, and from what I’ve read is supposed to help improve staging.
I can’t really comment of direct upgrades, amps just sound different to me.
There are higher tier OTL amps like the Glenn’s (a which I haven’t heard).
The original Cavali Liquid Crimson would be the obvious step from the Platinum (it’s the amp he based the Platinum on).
There is something of a no mans land in the 1-2K range, and arguably it’s worth holding out for the step into the $3K+ range, because it opens up a lot more options.
The higher tier A&S, DNA, Eddie Current, Decware, MicroZOTL, Woo, amps are all very good and very different to each other, and I’m just scratching the surface of US Made bespoke amps. You also have none US made amps.
Tube amp designs haven’t fundamentally changed in 50 years, but it’s all about the details.
Bottlehead and MAD both have several models in the $1000+ range, most of them are for high impedance headphones, but they have some that use a different tech that let them behave like a hybrid, yet actually aren’t.
Feel free to correct me if im wrong but that appears to be an unbalanced tube amp? I don’t see the tubes either to switch them to a seperate sounding tube. Color me confused due to inexperience with these style of tube amps.
ah thats what I figured. That’s rather interesting seems like it would be a bit of a bother to change out the tube. Think I may be good just staying with the LP. Though granted thinking of grabbing Bottlehead + speedball as well for a straight tube amp
