Re: Page layout for tubie pages on the net Re: Deep Space 845 55WSETamps.

On 4 Oct, 14:55, Patrick Turner <i...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
bigwig wrote:

On 29 Sep, 08:18, Patrick Turner <i...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
bigwig wrote:

On 24 Sep, 01:02, Patrick Turner <i...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

snip,

I have run way out of time to make a few more pages and must do my last
two year's of tax returns or else the ATO might get cranky.

Fucking time. If only there was +20dB more of it!

Patrick Turner.

Peter Wieck
Melrose Park, PA- Hide quoted text -

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Ok great,
  Patrick,
 You use hardwood for posts? why?. You say you seal it with varnish.
Do you think varnish lasts 50+ years? I dont. 1000 odd volts across a
bit of *** wood does not last long. No offence I have learnt alot
from your site.Any way, Brittish bikes, hey we still make some real
jems. I dont know of any Ausy bikes that last the Brittish weather.
Dont forget all the Formula 1 cars are built in England.

I don't have 1,000V across any two close terminals. The wood isn't ***
wood such as soft pine etc which may well deteriate, but do remember
that wood in ancient Italian violins is still structurally OK despite
their 300 year age. Plastics might last 300years, but finding cheap rods
of temperature resistant fibre re-inforced plastic rod for use with
turrets or screws is not easy unless I made my own or pay huge prices..

The varnish is polyurethane. The product I have used has lasted for 32
years without any visible deteriation on furniture I made 30 years ago.
The timber resistance remains so high for so long that the life is
extremely long, and far longer than the expected future use of the amp
will be, because in 50 years the change in the world of consumer habits
will change much more than during the past 50 years. If someone finds an
amp of mine they wish to upgrade in 50 years, then it may be worth using
strips that are better but probably won't make much difference to the
sound or reliability.

I don't have any reason to criticize current productions british
motorcycles or the F1 cars right now.
I don't know enough about them, and have not owned recently made UK made
things.

No doubt many else outside the UK would have some constructive criticsms
to make.

I once owned a procession of 4 different British bikes, 250cc XC10L,
side valve POS.Ditto but 250CC OHV, POS, and a Matchless G80 500cc, also
POS, then another matchless 650cc twin, much faster, but another
shorlived POS that was always breaking down and seizing up. I moved to
building a DIY Harley 1.2L with Norton ES2 barrels and G80 heads, and
many other bits of other bikes and it went OK for a couple of years
and of course in Oz we were riding far longer distances than on the UK
when 50km was a long ride. 500km is a long ride here. Roads out west in
the old days were horrible, so things like a Triumph "Blunderbird"
rattled to bits as you rode along, and guys would have stop to pick the
mufflers and footrests etc, so poor was the british fucking engineering.

My mother drove a Morris Oxford which rusted to bits quickly, had lousy
performance, poor fuel economy and needing service often, despite its
simplicity. My father had a Willys Jeep station wagaon based around the
US made jeep parts used in WW2, and that was a better made thing.

Many people drove australian made Fords and Holdens which gave
surprising milages. I had a Holden panel van that went OK for well over
twice around the clock. Then I had a Holden 1 tonner utility truck, far
more useful than better from anything made in the UK at the price. Of
course the local car making in Oz has always been owned by parent
companies eslewhere, and mainly based in the US then later in Japan
because the low cost of vehicles can only be achieved if thousands can
be made profitably.

AFAIK, there have never been any Oz owned brand of motorcycle made
because of the competion and dominance of OS brands and the fact that
the demand for motorcycles in Oz is way too low to ever allow profitable
mass manufacturing unless we exported vast numbers. But cheap labour
rates in asia make manufacturing anything in Oz increasingly impossible.
I thought you might know this.

In 1971, worked and saved up and I bought a BMW R75/5 for $1,650, second
hand, 9,000 miles. Better tyhan paying the new price of over $2,500 at
that time. I rode another 100,000 miles before selling it in 1981 for
$1,800. Nothing major went wrong during that time and oil use wasn't
much, noise was tolerable, and the next guy probably rode if for another
100k. The Germans made things better than the Poms.

If somebody wants to walk into a Australian hi-fi shop to buy an SET amp
which is at least of passable quality, then they get a bit of a Shock..
Firstly, there is no available british made amps in the shops except
extremely poorly designed and made amps such as Audion, or CR
Developments both of which have entirely cheap nasty Chinese metalwork
and styling, and reliablity way below what I'd provide routinely,
because they are aimed at a gullible sucker market. The Drake
transformers in the Audion Silver Night with 2 x 300B are BLEEDIN
AWFUL!!!
People might find a shop stocking Quad tube gear, and the quality is
better, but the price is horrifying. Quad is made in China, but no
discount is given for the employment of Chinese slave labour willing to
work for a tiny fraction of British wages. Old Quad-II power amps and 22
preamps are non long lasting unless serviced regularly, and are shitful
standard gear, just like the BSA motorcycles and Morris cars of
yesterday, and they all need re-engineering like Leak etc....

Secondly, if you still want something passably decent in the SET
variety, then you'll maybe find a shop or two stocking something hi-end
which has a decent tube and transformer line up within. One example is
the KR Audio integrated VA350 stereo amp which makes 20W per channel
using a KT T100 tube in each channel. The people in Prague seem to know
more about making vacuum tubes than the poms do. The T100 has Ra about
1.2k, and has similar looks to an 845 and same 100W Pda rating. But it
has cathode heating requirement of 5V x 2.5A, and there are not many if
any other asian made tubes which could be used instead of the KR made
tube. The T100 costs about aud $600 if you can ever find one available
because CZ production is in such low numbers. So the solidly made KR
VA350 with solid state drive amp instead of tubes could be a real
problem if an owner were to blow or break a T100 tube; maybe KR go broke
in 5 years and the amp then needs replacement power trannies custom made
to allow the use of 845 from KR, if you can ever buy them, or 845 from
China at 1/4 of the price. The VA350 is being offered for sale at a
retail price of aud $18,000 from Duratone Hi-Fi in Canberra, my home
town. They have offered me a price on the tubes from KR but were not
able to say if they'd ever stock any, or be able to get them within
several months after ordering them. So the supply of KR made tubes is
not either plentiful or reliable. KR themselves have told me that 845
are not due to be made again until next october, perhaps, and I'd say
all their production will be devoted to dealers in the US who won't sell
outside the US and who have not replied to my emails. So ppl wanting
amps with 845 in Oz need to think of using Chinese 845 which to me are
probably just as good sounding as any 845 ever made, and If I use a
**pair** with easy Ia Ea ratings, they'll make much more power than one
lousy tube, much less THD/IMD, and if that does not translate to
something better than the one tube 20W wonder, I'll eat a darn 845. Now
I have offered 55 Watt SET amps which can be used with a pair of 845
made by KR Audio, as shown in the pictures at my website, but the price
is half the local hi-fi shop price despite having twice the power, and
an all tube line up without solid state drive amps. But the catch to
what I offer is that you wait 9 months before you get it. People with
attention span disorder who expect an instant fix should always never
deal with me. I don't have ASD, and have always saved up to buy
something worth waiting for. There are other brands of SE amps with 845
within but none that sell for prices like mine and all have no active
protection and all have printed circuit boards of frightful complexity
and ther usual BS found when you take a real hard look inside the amp..
They look so pretty and tidy, but shame about the thought put into the
amp!!! None of these brand names openly display all their details within
and I an alone amoung makers and can claim to offer a perfectly
transparent deal about the amps I make. Take it or fucking leave it. I
am not in the business of making pretentiously priced crap. The few
buyers who buy my products often have had me build them a preamp, or
re-engineer and an old pair of Quads, or re-engineer a terrible fucking
british CR Audio Developments amp, and they learn that I really know my
stuff but I don't offer the same glitzy bling of BS found in hi-fi
shops. Its a real challenge to teach buyers of amps that the shops
mostly provide expensive junk, and that more than 1/2 what they pay is
shop markups which don't make the amp quality of sound quality one tiny
bit better.
The Shops look for "fast" amplifiers. One salesman said I should hear
some terrible crummy SE amp with 3 x 6L6; "its fast!" he brayed at me
within a week of telling me my amps sounded better than anything they'd
had in the shop for years. Novelty wears off. I replied to the salesman
with "Fast, eh? does that mean it sells quick?" It was the cheapest most
awful SE POS that could be bought in 1996. The shop used mine to
demonstrate what a great amp should sound like, but led folks over to
the cheap Jolidas etc, and they'd buy. When the Internet became
mainstream in about 2000, I waved the damn shops goodbye because they
never ever helped me, and only sold stuff at high prices which had cost
them peanuts to import, exploiting the average customers complete
ignorance about prices OS or about any matters regarding quality
assessment.

Patrick Turner.

Hello Patrick,
  Sorry about the last post, guess I was just pissed and grumpy!!.

No need to apologise for being a grumpy old man. I know all about that
:-)

Hard wood is fine. I might check some out though for leakage, noise
etc. I know this is not an issue on a transformer, but hey worth an
experiment.

Hardwoods like dry oak or rock maple, or eucalypts etc are fine for
terminal strips. If I drill two holes 1mm apart and press fit the prods
of my Fluke DMM into the holes on the ohms range it measures OL. If the
terminals are 10mm apart I don't see any concernes about current
leakage. Especially when the circuit resistance between a pair of
terminals is thousands of times less than the resistance across 10mm or
hard dry wood.

   I agree about the old Brittish crap. A friend of mine owned a BSA
600 twin that was factory race spec. Nice you may think, and yes it
was. Back in 94-95 it would piss on a CBR900!!. Was it reliable? NO.
it leaked like a seive, had no battery, 6V electrics after a fassion,
basicaly halve wave rectified stick a lamp on the end to get an MOT.
Good fun though.

I never had the funds to buy a decent MC in my late teens or early
twenties, and because I was a carpenter's apprentice I had little access
to machine tools to fiddle around with engines seriously, something the
apprentice mechanics were able to do after hours, or at work when the
boss wasn't watching. But I did make mysellf a Harlnormatchbsa. It took
about a year after age 19. it ended up somwhat different to what I
originaly extexted to make, but had 1939 side valve Harley 1,200cc Vtwin
side valve bottom end, Altered ES2 Norton irn barrels, Matchless G80
heads, two carbs and siameased exhaust, BSA altered petrol tank, Honda
alternator, HD 750 ignition coil, 1958 Duo glide swing arm frame, 1935
vintage leading link forks, Mini Minor front shock absorber, Girling
rear shocks, very altered top half and rear of frame to
make it more ridgid, oil tank and plumbing and many other brackets and
parts and exhausts and intake manifolds made at home by bending sand
filled pipes then oxy-acet welding or brazing them. Norton front wheel,
Matchless back wheel with slightly heavier spokes. I had to ride in 3rd
gear everywhere around town at night because the low revving engine
didn't get the alternator to kick much charge into the battery and power
lights etc. I once took it up to about 95MPH when it started to get a
speed wobble and i realised there was more to stability than just
bundling old parts together. But at 95 it wasn't struggling, and it'd do
that in 3rd gear. Lord knows how fast it could have gone. I had a foot
clutch, the 1939 gearbox was four speed with a gated lever on the petrol
tank. It was OK for a long trip though, and shielas who liked a wild
ride in more ways than one were much delighted by the contraption I had
made. I got an ex NSW Police Dept side car which had a width to take two
slim adults side by side, or one big fat police sargeant. I got rid of
the actual side car anf built a plywood box
with pit for tools under a smaller seat that hinged down over it. I
could put 6 x 40Kg bags of cement in it. Once i crammed about 10 people
hanging on all over it to get them from a pub to a nearby house for
continued drinking. Pubs used to shut at 10pm in those days. It was
always breaking down though, and I took it back to plain side valve and
it lost its zing but was a goor side car machine. The SV barrels had
been bored to max size and I'd had a guy fit Ford Falcon flat top car
pistons with press fitted gudgoens. This arrangement was very reliabale
for about 18 mths, but finally the press-fit loosened, and a gudgeon
slip over and scored a large groove in one barrel.
I got busy with work and study, and got sick of the dirty hands each
fortnight. So I cut my losses and sold it to a bloke who rode up to
Queensland with his missus. It lurked up there for some time until he
went out on some hard sand flats in a tidal zone one day where it got
bogged. The tide came in. It sank into the wet sand and mud nearly out
of sight. He had a few more joints, and kinda forgot about it.
I'd say there's not much left of it after 40 years.

I rode a japanese tidler 100cc with drop bars and lowered seat to get
around while I saved to buy something decent after I broke up with an
expensive to run and unfaithful shiela I had had. Within another 15
months I bought a BMW with low miles. No more dirty hands each
fortnight,
and a better class of shiela was ready to ride with me. My pay went up
as the company promoted me, and I didn't have to struggle to stay
mobile. The BMWR75/5 was a far nicer bike to ride and own than anything
british or american that was available in 1972. I had nice long ride
once on a 650cc Norton Dominator, and yes, it did seem like it was on
rails and had the most impecable handling and road holding. But it made
you somewhat over confident on corners. I did also briefly owned Bultaco
Metralla which was a worn out POS with many faults but it also had the
fabulous handling style of the Norton. But the Bultaco pitched me off 3
times in 3 months because I would ride too fast around corners and it'd
just slide out front end first so i sold it because I knew I might die
on that. The BM gave you better handling than the Marchlesses I'd owned,
nearly as good as the Norton, but with some feedback so you knew when
you were at the bikes limits, so I never fell off in 100,000 miles, and
toured long miles without fatigue, vibration was low and the ride
comfortable. I fitted a white fairing and people in cars behaved because
it looked like a copper's bike which also had white fairings. I made a
fibreglass cast of some other guy's Dolfin fairing meant for R69S, and
then altered that to cast a better fairing for my R75/5 and a mate's
bike. I made a nice windshield with clear perspex with upturn curve so I
sit there and have a cigarette at 60MPH with the wind zipping up over
the top of my helmet.

I gave up MCs in 1981, and went to bicycles in 1986, raced on them for 6
years, then stopped riding for 13 years, and now have got back onto the
bicycle for the last 2.5 years and riding 8,000 km since last Xmas. Cars
are no fun, just a necessary alternative form of transport so  have a
Ford Laser, 1986 model, POS, but it works OK.

I am happier on a bicycle now, and all the old girls who rode on MC 40
years ago are rather haggard now and have no atraction to me. The few
shielas i see on bicycles all look much more attractive, and they are
very fit.

  The BMWs are great my dad and his brothers have owned loads and
toured all of Europe on them. He currently has an 1150RT. His brother
built a GS before GSs came about.  He used an R850 engine and built
the frame etc. It had two kwaker tanks welded together and held a vast
amount of fuel, used to get strange looks in the petrol station
filling up.
  I quite like the Holden/Vauxhall thing we get here, Basically 30
grand for a car that fucks on most stuff and doesnt look like an iron
with an ironing board for a wing.
I think I can remember an Ausi guy that built his own bikes from
scratch ie. did all the castings-everything. This thing was a beast, a
V-Twin, won all the races. I dont know what happened to it or the guy
that built it?.

I have entirely lost the urge to muck about with MC or derivatives any
more. I probably am far less likely to kill myself at 35kph on  a
bicycle than doing 160kph on some speedy motorcycle. I think I am very
lucky to still be here and not in a wheel chair or plain dead, and I am
very fit and healthy. If anything gets me it'll probably be something
boring like prostate cancer, but meanwhile I enjoy the motley crew of
ordinary mortals who ride in the bunch on sunday mornings. A few are
faster than I am and most are slower, but its always nice to dice with
the faster ones and hang back a bit for the slowies and enjoy the cafe
stops.

I have noticed over the last 20 years along with global warming, hills
have become steeper, and winds are blowing harder. And the young bucks
are riding faster. And that the older I get, the better I was.

Patrick Turner.

Excellent, I ride downhill MTBs for a laugh and Crossers in the w-end.
My dad and his brothers still ride trials(my dads 60 this year). I
agree on the wheel chair, I was almost in one back in 97 because my
mate decided driving a car at 90mph and swerving from one side of the
road to the other was fun!!. He bust 3 of my vertibrey and fractured
my scull, plus ribs etc. He wasnt so lucky, in a coma for 6 weeks
blood clot on the brain. You live and learn. He now teaches
parragliding in the Alps in summer and swings on rope from oil rigs in
winter. Guess he will never slow down!!.
Prostate-broccally my friend eat loads. Matt.
.