Solid State VS Valve

My limited experience with the EL34 tube in your amplifier is that it is magical in the midrange and lacking in the bass.  I have never heard your amp.  Bass is where traditionally solid state excels.  I imagine if your valve amp is gone long you will be longing for the midrange liquidity you most likely have with the valve amp.  

Good Luck!

Dear Martin,

Your point is interesting!

Your [valve derived] Trough Lines are being employed with great pleasure here now.

One is nice here and the other has just been rebuilt. The one that did not really work, but is the better one of the two!

I no longer have your email due to a change of email provider, when the hotmail account got corrupted, but perhaps you could ask Richard Dane for my email address, and as I would approve him giving it to you, he may feel free to do this. 

Best wishes from George

Hi Brubacca,

I think you are correct - but, I suspect I want it all and I want it now .

Hi George,

I'll approach Richard.

Been following your thread. I also have a rather famous and well considered Yamaha tuner that has been sitting under my bed for a couple of years .....do you fancy giving it a go?

M

Dear Martin,

If I said yes to you suggestion, I’d be being greedy. From what I have heard from the Trough Lines over the last few months, I could not want anything different with Radio, but you should definitely give the Yammy a go yourself, and it may surprise you, or offer it for sale to someone who would make it go!

Apart from anything else we need to keep high quality FM/VHF going by using it and saying so, so that apathy does not see the service go!

It is nice to exchange words again!

Best wishes from George

Dear Martin,

Apart from anything else I have fallen for the simple delight of mono that the Trough Lines do with a sense of occasion that usual defeats modern equipment ... The Yammy must be a stereo machine at its heart ...

I do realise that I am fifty years out of date for all that ...

Very best from George

Hi Brubacca,

My LP12/Aro went in for a service yesterday.

George,

I've parked FM since my enormous and rather good aerial pulled out a significant chunk of my chimney!

I did try the Yammy. Like the amps there were elements (sic) that I preferred between the solid state Yamaha and the valve Troughline.

Followed your mono thread, most important thing for me is that you are still having fun!

M

It was in the 70s we heard (and discussed) the same arguments. Eppur si muove :-)

It may seem strange, but the depth of bass is staggering on the Trough Line with valves compared to any solid state tuner I have heard. But it is also true that it is more clear than loud. A nice compromise for the domestic setting.

And other Trough Line is winging its way back to me shortly arriving tomorrow or Saturday. This has a more slender, more modern sounding tonal balance, but goes just as deep. Now it is in a proper state, it will be fascinating to see if the the actual tonal balance has varied as the result of a replacement mains transformer ...

Dear Martin, I ran the one Trough Line at my old house on a fairly small FM/VHF aerial of many fewer parts than the Galaxy and it worked well, but when I moved I knew that I was in a poor spot for reception and as I cannot have a roof aerial, I never even tried to set it up. I should have done. My own large loop aerial works very nicely even as it is in the window.

Thanks for the tuners those years ago now!

Best wishes from George

...bearing in mind that the ability to reproduce bass is rather limited with your choice of speaker.

(Sorry George, couldn't resist!)

Dear Tony,

Have you ever heard an ESL properly set up? Far enough from the back wall for example. Mine is now at five foot on the one side and six foot one the other from the solid brick wall behind. No ESL should ever be arranged parallel to the wall behind it, for example [ref: Peter Walker in the ESL Manual] Let me assure you that there is absolutely nothing weedy about the bass when an ESL is arranged optimally.

They need free space both behind and at the sides. Most rooms are not large enough to set a stereo part properly for example. They would be terrible in the position you have your DBLs for example.

But the ESL bass is far more lucid than any conventionally coned speaker - including DBLs, which I am well acquainted! Not as loud, but far more lucid and articulate, and, most crucially, precise about the pitch. 

I rather doubt that you are likely to hear mine as optimised, but the result is enough to cause those who have heard it to ask just what improvements have been made in speaker design in the intervening 58 years. Going louder but less clear is not really an improvement as that kind of speaker has been available during the whole period [1957 to the present day] that ESLs have been made.

I bet you wished you had not bothered to make your post now!

Best wishes from George

Well done George, I knew you wouldn't let me down! Yes, I have heard a nice pair, owned by a well-known forum member and set up very well. Your view on what speakers are more articulate and precise is, of course, very much your opinion, but that's taste for you.

Aye! Tony! 

ATB from George