Re: Mercury Magnetics --- Worth the price of admission?

koyangi <koyangi@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
RichL wrote:
koyangi <koyangi@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hey guys! I have built a few Marshall clones for fun and my next
project is going to be an 18W TMB clone with a custom tone stack.
I am going
to give this amp away as a gift, so I want it to sound as good as
possible. The guitarist that I am giving it to is a jazz player, but
definitely has some blues influences and likes a nice warm tone.

I am a systems engineer for a defense contractor by trade, so price
is usually the last thing I look at in a component (I think $7,000
is a good deal on a 19" LCD monitor). Usually I tend to overbuild,
but everything that I have built sounds great and would probably
pass a full mil-standard qualification test.

As I am making out the BOM for this amp I am torn between Heyboer
and Mercury Magnetics for the transformer set. Everything I have
built up to this point has been Heyboer and sounds amazing. I am
tempted to upgrade the transformers to Mercury, but I want to make
sure it is an actual upgrade.

I am the kind of guy that likes the Illinois caps just as well as
Sprauge but I am very picky about things like wire and screws. I
have been known to play a guitar that was not hand carved by Leo
Fender himself, but I would never admit it.

I have also been working with RADARs and power systems long enough
to know that there is still a little "mojo" out there that science
cannot adequately explain. To this day I am always amazed when I
hit the standby switch on one of my amps and that warm tubey
goodness comes out of the speakers.

So my question is ,in short, are the Mercury transformers worth it
or is it all just marketing? Thank you all in advance for your help
on this.

If you really paid $7000 for a 19" LCD monitor, I'd suggest that you
have different criteria for distinguishing between what's real and
what's marketing fluff than the rest of us.



First of all, you paid your share of the $7,000 too (and I don't even
have to assume you are an American to make that true). For the
military market $7000, really is cheap. Of course it is expected to
take over 2000Gs of shock (yes 2000, not a typo) and still work and
you have to be able to buy it for 15 years. Most of the times the
$3,000 display will explode into a shower of glass, aluminum, and
silicon and you might be lucky and get the same model on your next
order.

After your ship gets hit with a missile, it might be nice if the
targeting system still works so you can ensure the rude individuals
that fired it do not shoot another. After three or four of those
things, you have some real trouble on your hands...

If we are talking about avionics displays, then $20,000 is not unheard
of (if that display breaks, you have no instruments and stand a much
better than average chance of crashing). The point is, the cost is
sometimes justified but putting a $20,000 display into a platform that
only needs a $3,000 display is just wasteful.

OK, I thought you meant for your own personal use :-)
Having worked for DoD for 27 years, I get it. (Never could figure out
the $400 toilet seats, though...)


.

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