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a thought on speakers; my own limited experience showed.....

....that speakers are actually relatively unimportant! Now, before I get a truckload of bricks thrown at me, let me explain: yes, there's a difference in quality between speakers, but my impression is nowadays even cheapo's are pretty darn good. It's like phono cartridges - even a cheap MM cartridge today blows away anything available in the 60's except the highest of the high-priced boutique stuff - but perhaps that's a different argument - what I want to point out is that the jaw-dropping differences I heard with two amp mods - one a PP, the other a SET - when I went to triode strapping were obvious and stunning, and in both cases I was using cheapo speakers. In the first case a cheapo vertical pair of fullranges with a tweeter in between - there's a special name of that configuration - and in the second case a plain old 12" high efficiency guitar speaker in an unenclosed small cabinet. So, I think speakers make a difference in terms of the absolute quality, yes, but in terms of relative differences between mods in an amp, the differences are so essentially staggering that the speaker becomes relatively unimportant. Note that I am leaving volume consideratiions out; both of my present choices are high enough efficiency that in neither case could Max or I turn up the volume to more than 2/3 without it becoming deafeningly loud.

By the way, when I triode-strapped the guitar amp, Max turned to me with his mouth open and said, "How did you do that? It was already great, I didn't think you could make it any better!!" heh heh heh


"It ain't a comeback until it's left the shop" Jimmy Dunne, the first man to drive a VW Beetle faster than 200 mph, and he has the forehead scar to prove it; I will always honor him for taking a chance on me when I wanted to be an engine mechanic.

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