Last day and some tube porn

All good things have to come to an end...

Time to pack up.



But First some nice summary shots of the gear.

GM70s in full blaze

Very nice shroud around them.

There is nothing like transmitter tubes with throated tungsten and cherry red plates.

Even little ones look the stuff.

Mercury vapour not only sounds good but has the spooky blue glow.

When combined with the cherry red...

It makes for good company like a fireplace.

You can just look at the glow and relax...

while listening to the music.

Until Next year!

Prep work for the shoot out

Ahh the shoot out...

The day of measurements and phase alignment with the subwoofer.

The pressboard wall behind is the open baffle of the woofer section.

Sound checks...

Positive results.

Oops - the bargain table with lots of things to temp.

Some little conversations about the fish we have caught...

Live music.

Including JC providing examples during his lecture!

And the test bench so generously setup each year which illuminates and keeps feet on the ground.

Celestion Axi2050 and some serious horns to go with them.

Here is a very serious horn setup.

Classic curves and straight throat.

A variety of choice front ends from vintage reel to reel, broadcast turntable and pro digital.

In the corners are giant black boxes with bass horns...

A bipolar tweeter horn of inspired design.

Hand made.

Hand made transformer attenuator.

Vintage compresion drivers.

and... the fabled Celestion Axi2050 which goes down to 200hz!

It hopefully will be availible one day but for now this is about as close as any of us are going to get...

Thank you to the Norwegian group for sharing this formidable setup!

It should be mentioned that the Celestion Axi2050 was on loan from Celestion for this event and was not available commercially at the time this was published.

ETF 2017 Day 1

ETF 2017 Day 1

Getting together in the main hall and the goodie table begins to fill up. Hard not to spend some time perusing the vintage and choice samples from all the different collections.

Lots of tubes of course.

The test area where any gear is kindly tested.

Conversations are are numerous and varied.

This year is a high efficiency speaker shoot out.

Large super horns.

I do not know what it is but I want it.

Classic Quad

Wooden Horns

Lenco!

True folded horn.

Literally it folds up into a small box.

Triodes and top caps.

Beautiful little horns.

Not exoctic perhaps but sounding excellent and readily availible.

Hitsory.

Sexy.

Classic and well executed. 

Big old Studer...Sigh...

More Idler elegance.

Classic 401 with a new Origan Live arm.

Triodes? Big, bad, and beuatiful ones...

As you can see it is triode maven madness.

More to follow... Lots more.