I guess I joined the club, updates & 6L6GCs, liking it very much.
Audio Innovations Series 500
- Thread starter SaturationPt
- Start date
... I should've mentioned that it's the first British-made item I've owned that doesn't leak oil (MG, Triumph, Land Rover, Aston Martin, ... was in that "club" too).
TimF
Super Member
I realize this isn’t just a US based forum, but I doubt many were imported over here, probably other than reading about them, or from the few that owned them, there wasn’t much exposure to them here on this side of the pond. Speculation only on my part here though.
This one above looks to be in good shape and I would imagine sounds very good! Nice to see some different gear every now and then!
Yes those silly Brits, building a new valve amp that has both CD inputs and Phono inputs, what were they thinking in the '80s?
The normal tube was El34 for this amp
I realize it was originally running EL34, and there are some things I'm not completely understanding about this amp:
- The small tube sockets are all ceramic, all photos show the brown plastic
- The input/output jacks are all gold, all photos I see show gold on Phono and CD only
- The inputs are arranged differently than in photos.
- What changes were made to accommodate the 6L6GC?
The original owner took this to the Audio Innovations factory, at which time they performed significant updates/upgrades, some at no cost. Specifically mentioned is a power supply update and an update to the phono preamp. I don't know if anything such as sockets and input jacks were changed at that time. It is an early (4, 8, 16 ohm outputs) amp. He also had done some things with an outfit called Border Patrol who did the 6L6GC change I understand. He gave me some documents from Border Patrol with the original manual.
At this point it sounds great, it embarrasses some of my higher-priced equipment, and I can't argue with running tubes that are lower filament current to keep the power transformer cooler. I would like to know all that was done other than that documented in the schematics dated Sep 2000, at this point my only option is to compare the original schematics and photos to the 2000 ones.
