Best single ended tube amps

[cptnCanada]

Would like to see all of your vintage single ended tube amps. I have various PP vintage amps and a Viking (electrohome) SE console pull that I converted to standalone. There is something magic about single ended that makes me smile.

Were there any non console SE tube amps ever built (1950's-1960's)? Would like to see some pics of your single ended amps!

 

[maxhifi]

Were there any non console SE tube amps ever built (1950's-1960's)?

Sure. The smallest Heathkit was single ended for sure, and the PYE Mozart has a single horizontally mounted EL-34. I'm sure there are plenty of others, I know for sure many of the cheapest Japanese receivers were single ended.

The real popularity of single ended amplifiers in high fidelity applications though did not come until the tube revival of the 1990s, where you find brands such as Cary, Audio Note, Audion, Golden Tube Audio, etc. merging single ended design not being low end models built as cheap as possible.

The vintage designs are pretty much universally going to suffer from the same ills as most other cheap tube amps - small output transformers, humming power supplies, etc. The reason for this is during the vintage era, push pull was thought to be superior, so no serious single ended amps were built.