Please Tell me I made a good Choice in a Eico Tube Amp

mibag6 said:
I wouldn't get bogged down by specs. A lot of people just love the sound of these amps and most of us don't listen to sweep generators and test signals, preferring instead to listen to music.
Considering what people are willing to pay for those, there must be something good about them.
Click to expand...

The 1987 Grand National was specd at 235 H.P. Hot Rod magazine had well over that at the rear tires. :smoke:
 
I rebuilt an EICO HF81 last fall. I had to replace the 12AU7s with Tungsram E80cc plus play with the E80CC operating parameters to get a minimum reasonable quality sound out of it.

I gave away the two NOS E80cc at no charge and held my breath until the owner commented back they liked it. I just started upgrading tube amps for others last fall with my reputation on the line.

I made $20 on the deal with rebuilt PS, coupling cap upgrades, gold RCA jacks, etc.

But, we all hear differently and this HF81 may be the ticket for you even in stock form.
 
sony6060 said:
I rebuilt an EICO HF81 last fall. I had to replace the 12AU7s with Tungsram E80cc plus play with the E80CC operating parameters to get a minimum reasonable quality sound out of it.

I gave away the two NOS E80cc at no charge and held my breath until the owner commented back they liked it. I just started upgrading tube amps for others last fall with my reputation on the line.

I made $20 on the deal with rebuilt PS, coupling cap upgrades, gold RCA jacks, etc.

But, we all hear differently and this HF81 may be the ticket for you even in stock form.
Click to expand...


Sony,

A little birdie once told me me “Never Mix Audio with Alchemy”, that It would be better to get “blinded By Science”.
 
If an amplifier measures poorly it probably won't sound good.

It's the amplifiers that measure exceedingly well and sound bad that are the frustrating ones, and that includes a lot of Japanese iron from their "golden era."
 
GP49 said:
If an amplifier measures poorly it probably won't sound good.

It's the amplifiers that measure exceedingly well and sound bad that are the frustrating ones, and that includes a lot of Japanese iron from their "golden era."
Click to expand...

"If it measures good and sounds bad, it is bad; if it measures bad and sounds good, you have measured the wrong thing.".....Daniel von Recklinghausen, chief engineer for HH Scott.

There is a lot to be said for the differences in distortion spectra, as mentioned by Conrad above. We can deal with quite significant differences from "flat" response (tilts, curves, etc), as long as the distortion spectra is "benign" (low amounts of higher-order or odd-order harmonics and low non-harmonic (intermodulation, etc) content). The overall distortion level doesn't have to be exceedingly low (in fact, second harmonic distortion by itself, below 1/2 percent, is rarely a "serious" problem), but you can't have significant content of higher order distortion components (especially odd harmonics) and intermodulation, and expect it to sound good at all.

The Eico, for all its faults on paper, does seem to fall within the "good" definition I have just inferred above, in that it seems to have "benign faults"- slight errors in FR, and a distortion spectra that is dominated by even, low-order harmonics. You could do much worse...

In any case- I just got through doing a "minimalist restoration" of a very clean one of these HF-81s- I replaced the (IMHO crappy) ceramic coupling caps with good film caps for the most part, replaced all the wax/paper caps and such with good film caps, and recapped all the electrolyic caps with good quality units. Nothing exotic- just stuff that should hold up well over a long time. The thing just sounded pleasing as hell afterward. I don't CARE if it's accurate or not, it just made me WANT to listen. I can save my "perfectionist tendencies" for another time and another piece of equipment, in this case...

Regards,
Gordon.
 
I heard from the Seller and he shipped it today double boxed and Priority mail should
be here by Monday, and now my Ungar soldering iron died, cold as ice. :tears:

Tube
 
the ears are the test-specs,graphs ect are only a futile effort to apply science to what is essentially a ''black art''.
 
tube-a-lou said:
I heard from the Seller and he shipped it today double boxed and Priority mail should
be here by Monday, and now my Ungar soldering iron died, cold as ice. :tears:

Tube
Click to expand...

Your EICO will sound better than any SS amp I heard. So, you're in.
 
Guy's,
I have all the electrolytics for the Eico, first up the top panel has the 40,40,20uf I'm
going to use a F&T 50+50 500volts, then for the 20uf I have a IC 22uf 450v. next for
the pair of 30uf's I'm going to use again a F&T 50+50 500volts and just rewire it around
to the right sections. the other sections I have some Silmic's which I'll work in there and
some Spraque plus I've ordered some .1uf's and bit by bit it will be done.

Tube
 
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