Audioholics on Carver Tube Amps

[gadget73]

Mine definitely does not. My S-7000 has a fingerprint burned into the copper chimney over the tubes where I got too close once.

 

[Frank Malitz]

I'd still like to know wtf happened with Bob's partnership with Emotiva to build an entire tube line .

The partnership was stillborn. The products were not made by us and had a fairly high defective rate. We have no defectives. We have no service department-- no need. All the current product since I came on board-- about four years ago-- is handmade in Washington state and is no connection whatsoever to Emotiva.
Frank Malitz CEO
The Bob Carver Co.

 

[Frank Malitz]

Well I went to the website to try it out - they immediately wanted money so ..........

Not my website. We do not sell to the public.We are not affiliated with any other company.
Frank Malitz CEO
The Bob Carver Co.

 

[invaderzim]

Well I went to the website to try it out - they immediately wanted money so ..........

It was a bit difficult for me to find their actual website amongst all the others using carver in the title https://www.bobcarvercorp.com/products

 

[Frank Malitz]

yeah, same as an SS amp, when its jamming its going to make heat. I suppose with a bunch of tubes in parallel you might be able to minimize that somewhat by spreading out the load.

I'm not buying that it can perform any healing magic on bad tubes though, unless it comes with a regular visit from a shaman who can wave the rare healing getter crystals over it.

OK, here's how it works. It's Sunday night so I''l be brief; I have other thjngs pressing.

The major cause of tube failure is impurities in the tube. When an impurity hits the wrong surface, an arc appears and at that instant, a plasma occurs, the impurity is vaporized and the tube is healed. BUT, there's a sacrificial fuse, only for this purpose that must be changed and you're back in business and since the impurity was vaporized, the odds of a repeat failure is virtually nil. It will not "heal" a short in the tube (rare) or if your kid hits it with a soccer ball. So, why doesn't everyone else use a fuse on the output tubes? Because it sounds bad! So, Bob had to design an amp where the outputs have very little influence on the sound. The nature of the unit is heavily due to the "little" tubes and the transformers. Even if you roll tubes, you'll hear little difference. We include a little bag of fuses just in case.

Regarding the tube life, we expect 26 years on the 275 model's tubes, before degeneration, not failure--46 years on the 350-series and forever on the four-chassis $32,000 Silver Seven 900s. So, the warranty, a legally-controlled document, is five years including tubes on the 275 (20-times longer that AR or MAC), 15 year on the 350-series and forever on the big amp. How foolish would we be if this were not true! KT120s are expensive! The tube checker meter is on the front of the unit.

The reason for the longevity is the combination of the 6AL5 DC restorer (assuring exact correct bias without drift) and the dynamic bias scheme invented by Bob. A great deal of the time the tube can be resting due to the dynamic nature of music. By the way, my 1950 tube manuals claim a tube can last indefinitely of the circuit is properly-designed and they warn us not to shake tubes as you'll send the impurities floating around, likely to cause a failure. I can provide the math but I have to ask Jordon, my young and brilliant physicist and partner; he's much smarter that I am!

We've given two KT120s in the last four years with no argument.

Frank Malitz CEO (and Shaman, apparently)
The Bob Carver Co.

 

[Frank Malitz]

It was a bit difficult for me to find their actual website amongst all the others using carver in the title https://www.bobcarvercorp.com/products

try this:
https://www.bobcarvercorp.com/

 

[gmfgmfgmf1]

Not my website. We do not sell to the public.We are not affiliated with any other company.
Frank Malitz CEO
The Bob Carver Co.

I was referring to - the Audioholics website
Not a Carver website - sorry for the confusion

 

[maxhifi]

OK, here's how it works. It's Sunday night so I''l be brief; I have other thjngs pressing.

The major cause of tube failure is impurities in the tube. When an impurity hits the wrong surface, an arc appears and at that instant, a plasma occurs, the impurity is vaporized and the tube is healed. BUT, there's a sacrificial fuse, only for this purpose that must be changed and you're back in business and since the impurity was vaporized, the odds of a repeat failure is virtually nil. It will not "heal" a short in the tube (rare) or if your kid hits it with a soccer ball. So, why doesn't everyone else use a fuse on the output tubes? Because it sounds bad! So, Bob had to design an amp where the outputs have very little influence on the sound. The nature of the unit is heavily due to the "little" tubes and the transformers. Even if you roll tubes, you'll hear little difference. We include a little bag of fuses just in case.

Regarding the tube life, we expect 26 years on the 275 model's tubes, before degeneration, not failure--46 years on the 350-series and forever on the four-chassis $32,000 Silver Seven 900s. So, the warranty, a legally-controlled document, is five years including tubes on the 275 (20-times longer that AR or MAC), 15 year on the 350-series and forever on the big amp. How foolish would we be if this were not true! KT120s are expensive! The tube checker meter is on the front of the unit.

The reason for the longevity is the combination of the 6AL5 DC restorer (assuring exact correct bias without drift) and the dynamic bias scheme invented by Bob. A great deal of the time the tube can be resting due to the dynamic nature of music. By the way, my 1950 tube manuals claim a tube can last indefinitely of the circuit is properly-designed and they warn us not to shake tubes as you'll send the impurities floating around, likely to cause a failure. I can provide the math but I have to ask Jordon, my young and brilliant physicist and partner; he's much smarter that I am!

We've given two KT120s in the last four years with no argument.

Frank Malitz CEO (and Shaman, apparently)
The Bob Carver Co.

When you say "the major cause of tube failure..." above, is it correct to assume you're speaking about catastrophic failure, rather than normal loss of cathode emission over time?

 

[PanheadXR290]

The partnership was stillborn. The products were not made by us and had a fairly high defective rate. We have no defectives. We have no service department-- no need. All the current product since I came on board-- about four years ago-- is handmade in Washington state and is no connection whatsoever to Emotiva.
Frank Malitz CEO
The Bob Carver Co.

Wow ,thank you for answering the big question many Emotiva owners have been asking for years ,Emotiva never gave a reason why the Partnership dissolved ,they drew us in like crack heads using Bob's legacy of creating masterpieces to keep all of us premium gear buyers drooling and buying more Emotiva gear ,in the back of my mind I figured it had something to do with the company using Chinese labor with **** quality control but wasn't sure ,thank you for taking the time to clear that up,it makes my decision to bail early justified ,I still love my XPR-1 Monoblocks and XPR-2 2 channel amps but that's where I bailed & finished that rig with non Emo gear ,thanks again .

Levi Garrett .