19 March 2005

           Cactus Tube Dudes of Arizona

Boyd's House.
We went to Boyd's house to see his Main (big) and refinished family room (little) system. As always, Boyd put on quite a food spread. We invited the Tuscon DIY crowd to this meeting because they were nice enough to invite the Phoenix crowd to their get together. The Tuscon crowd is mostly a solid state group, the Phoenix crowd was a tube group. It was great to be around people who didn't think you should be locked up for saying cables sound different.

This is the big system. This is pair of MTM Altecs with a shared subwoofer. Each speaker has it's own tube power amp. According to Boyd, "Good amps used with a quality electronic crossover outperform great amps with a passive crossover."

The thing that looks like a wooden box on the floor behind the marble top table (with the chess set) is a sennsurround subwoofer driving a bass horn. This subwoofer section drives a horn with a mouth in each corner of the room. With the mouth in the corner, it should appear 4 times larger than the actual opening. I think Boyd said that the sub can go to 14 Hz. I'm reusing an old picture of this system because the new pictures didn't come out.


 



Food:
Dr. Pepper (woo hoo!), Coke, Diet Coke, Sprite, beer and more
Ham Sandwiches on tortillas, Salmon, Veggies and dip, and more.

Big System (Living Room)

CD Player:

CDP-  Phillips modded w/tube driven line stage, (14AF7)
Preamp:
Preamp-  Custom Don Allen tube design with separate power supply.  Line stage 12AU7, phono section 14F7 x 3.


Speakers:

* Electronic Crossover- modded 2-way Marchand XM9 with Welborne Labs power supply.  Linear Technology OP Amps.  Crossover freq.- 900 HZ 24 dB/ Oct slope.
* Tweeters/Midrange- Radian 16 ohm PB235 1" compression drivers mounted on Sierra-Brooks mahogany Tractrix horns.
* Woofers- Custom Altec 816A horn cabinets loaded with reconed EV SRO15 woofers (1960's vintage)
     More info on the custom Altecs
* Subwoofer- MCA Studios Sennsurround model "M" with extended exponential horns, totaling 14 foot horn length x 2.  Loaded with an Eminence Kappa 18 woofer.


Amps:

* Tweeter/Mid amps- custom monoblocks with Softone RW-20 output iron, 5814 driver, 6BQ5 power tube.  3.5 Watts
* Woofer amps- custom monoblocks with Softone RW-20 output iron, 5963 driver, 6BQ5 output tube. 5 Watts
* Sub amp- German Hypex HS200 plate amp with toroidal transformer. Crossover freq- 60 Hz 24 dB/ Oct slope.

RW-20 Transformer Used in Boyd's amp


Small System (Family Room)

CD Player:

CDP-  Phillips modded w/tube driven line stage, (14AF7)
Speakers:
* Electronic Crossover- modded 2-way Marchand XM9 with Welborne Labs power supply.  Linear Technology snob OP Amps.  Crossover freq.- 1320 HZ 24 dB/ Oct slope.
* Tweeters/Midrange- Radian 16 ohm PB235 1" compression drivers mounted on Edgar  horns.
* Woofers- Wall-mounted Altec 815A horn cabinets concrete reinforced with rear chamber scoop porting each loaded with dual Eminence Omega Pro 15's.
Amps:
* Tweeter/Mid amps- Gutted and rebuilt Decware- 5963 driver, 6BQ5 output tube. 3.5 Watts
* Woofer amps- custom monoblocks Push-pull 2A3's, dual rectifiers.  12 Watts
Low level Interconnects:
Silver plated Teflon microwave coax with toroidal common mode chokes/ Radio Shack polystyrene connectors.
Speaker Interconnects:
2 AWG cables from Apache Reclaimation.
Turntable:   Not used today.

Some of the Vinyl  Played: Not used today.

Some of the CDs  Played:

 
Artist Title




Chris Rea  Road to Hell






Attendees:
Volt         S.
Dan        A.
Howard   F.
Alan       K.
Bill         E.
Boyd      B.

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