Classic Class A

Eh up! ekky thump!

British (Yorkshire) classic class A on the cheap.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Sugden-C51-P5...8QQihZ002QQcategoryZ12050QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

70 squids at the moment. Wonderfully classic early British hi-fi. No concession to namby pamby things like looks, just lots of steel and *big* frame transformers.

Richard

 

if you rate the olde class A suggies that much, how come you didn't design your own amps to operate in class A?

 

That's a P51 which was class AB (like the A48) - the early class A power amp was the A51 which is a truly excellent amp. The P51 is very nice but not as good.

Tony.

 

History and collectability doesn't often mean it is "that good". I thought it was the class A one, which is pretty good.

A Humber super snipe is a big lump of steel as well but does it perform like a modern car? It has character and so does the Sugden.

I don't copy anything from anyone!

Richard

 

Hey, no accusations here! I just wondered that's all

 

No offence felt or taken, just adding clarification.

In 1971 I worked for few months for G.W.Smith & Co (Radio) Ltd at 27 Tottenham Court Rd (now who remembers them? They had shops in Soho and Edgware Road). They were one of the first discounters. They had an A51 / C51 Sugden in the shop and I remember carrying the bloody things around. Much better than any other trannyamp around at that time. Put it with a pair of old Quads and they blew away the Quad amps. I also heard it with a pair of Lowther PM6's in a couple of home made cabs. I have a love hate relationship with these drivers, for me they are Rehdeko like in both irritation and appreciation.

Any way I just brought them up for nostalgia reasons. I still say bloody great lumps of Yorkshire iron

Richard

 

What about the NVA DACon?

Best

Nigel

 

Already replied to when the subject came up at wigwam, I copy below.

murray johnson wrote:
Hi Effem,

"I vaguely recall some unfortunate business whereby he was selling a cd player with a cheapy off the shelf QED (Little Bit?) DAC fitted inside it. It got excellent reviews until someone opened one and found out what was in it! "

I replied

It was your friend Paul Miller and it was the DACon not the CD player. We had a tie in with QED and helped them with power supply development work because I was so surprised how good the Digit was for the money, but it improved out of all proportion with a little extra work and bigger power supplies, which led to their Positron. We used their PCB's and modified them, supplied by them with their permission, to build out DAC.

A DACon was supplied to Choice who gave it to Paul Miller for a group test. I told Paul I would give him no technical or origin information until after the test, so as not to set a pre-conceived reaction (a QED digit was on the group test as well). He decided to take it apart (break it) and wrote a review accusing us of basically being crooks without consulting me or QED first or supplying copy before publication.

We sued! and won an out of court settlement. It took 2 years of delaying tactics by Dennis Publishing during which we were black listed at Choice. Part of the final deal was that Choice would remove that black listing and let us submit products for review again. We supplied an amplifier which was given to Richard Black who trashed it as much as he possibly could, even though the same design was reviewed three years prior and was given a glowing review. I leave you to judge motivation. Anyway it was a large part of my decision to put the company to bed for a while as I was just so pissed off with the industry. But 6 years of teaching Tai-Chi and Qigong, and with methods now of selling on-line without all the hassle of reviewers, retailers and distributors has made me start up again in a small way.

NVA is part time and also gives a point of support for the old product out there.

Richard

 

Apologies! It was a cheap attempt at sarcasm.

Best

Nigel

 

Sugden C51/P51

The Sugden C51/P51 are one of the few pre power amps that can drive electrostatic speakers to great effect without becoming unstable, esp quads, although not class A they have great sensitivity to musical content, At the same time I had these I also had an older class a version of the power amp. In terms of sound the class A was better but lacked the Punch of the P51. at the time my system was Transcriptors Turntable, Shure V15/111 Sugden c51/p51 B&w DM70s,
To Richard Dunn old GW Smiths shop that used to be after the flyover A40 coming up from marble arch end. Happy memories.

 

They had two in Edgware Rd. After the merger with Lasky's I ended up managing one of them during the 3 day week. Running a DC lighting lash up off the phone line in order to keep open during the power cuts

Some of you valvies would have a fit at all the Gov' surplus valves, caps etc we carted off eventually for land fill in the mid 70's. If I had stuck them all into a couple of garages I could make a fortune now. Ah! hindsight is a marvelous thing.

Richard

 

To Richard, that might have been the old HL.SMITH shop ,shame on you, That shop was so filled with tagboards valve stuff etc and run by a person that looked slightly like robert moog, my memory of lasky's, is that for some period of time they took over a huge store virtually opposite there main base in tottenham crt rd, there I listened to, in a huge room, space ritual through Tannoy guy fountains, bc3s various jbls and imf pros. This is all pre naim, then got naim, got dq10s, got disapointed, got amt1s got disapoined, got tangents was ok, that was years ago. do you like electrostatic speakers in terms of their speed of responce and soundfield have you ever heard the shackman tweeters. what would you think of an AR LST combined with an electrostatic tweeter.

 

I can assure you I am not wrong, there was H.L Smith and G.W. Smith, seperate entities that caused problems even then. In the 50's and 60's Henry L Smith, George W Smith and Harry Lasky used to compete at government surplus auctions to buy up the electronics lots (I have even seen Spitfire cockpit instruments). G.W.Smiths had the Old Brewery on the common at High Barnet absulutely full of all this stuff. A valvie electronic tweakers paradise. As I say it all got dumped into landfill in the mid 1970's.

When the merger happened with Lasky's there were 3 shops in the group within a couple of hundred yards of each other on the Edware Road.

Also after the merger there were 3 shops within a few hundred yards on Tottenham Court Road as well. Lasky's were also the UK importers of Trio (Kenwood) and G.W.Smith imported some little known yank stuff called Lafayette. Compared with the likes of Imhofs, where salesmen wore suits, we were a scruffy lot. Burrowing in cellars and dragging around dusty boxes.

Acoustic Research in the early days were something special. I worked for them as well Either refered to as the devil incarnate for inventing the sealed box or acoustic suspension system. Or gods for finally giving us usable bass without boxes the size of American fridges. Ray Allison their designer was my hero, he came up with the LST. Incidently google him and you will find some enthusiasts stateside have dragged him out of retirement to design speakers in his name again. Coupling speakers to the room environment was his fortie, conceptually Pi - 2Pi - 4Pi. Work used by Linn in the Isobaric and Sara but never acknowledged. Find some old Allison corner speakers (triangular shaped) on ebay and you will have a retro treat. I personally loved the Quad 57's and owned a pair for years, they were my early days nva design test speakers, along with the Allisons. The latter Quads I disliked, too much complication.

I am very tempted by a rebuilt pair of 57's up at ebay at the moment but they are going up to silly money.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI....70034590258&rd=1&sspagename=STRK:MEBI:IT&rd=1

Richard

 

My last post got me thinking as it ties in with all this waffle about bad hotel room acoustics.

Ray Allison never had problems with Hi-Fi shows acoustics, his dems at CES Chicago and Las Vegas are legendary, why?? because he didn't fight the room he worked with it. Some of these old skills and knowledge are lost by this generation of tweekers. Each new generation thinks they know it all

Richard

 

sold for £250.

Imho Unclepuncle's Perreaux in the classifieds is a much better bet in the £200-£500 price range.

 

Still got a day left and up to £360.

Richard

 

Hi Richard

I was refering to the Sugden amps....

The quads look nice btw. Great speakers, good price if in decent nick

 

To Richard, the one thing audios look great, And they are able to repair and service them. About the LSTs I have 30 original cabs which I bought about a year and a half ago. have all the tweeters and midband units to complete ( not AR ) but they sound great BUT big problems with the bass driver nobody makes one compatible. So thinking of using 4 times 5" drivers instead should yield a more dynamic base and can shunt the drivers with a heavy coil to extend the lf, with a bypass to correct. My problems with ELS57s is The tightness of the sweet spot and flatness at higher frequencies, I have built my own stats for treble only and they sound much more open. better than the els57 and the shackmans I spoke of earlier. in the treble region.

 

ESL57 - Things I did with mine 1 - took out all the rubbish damping from the back. 2 - wedged the base units at the corners.

AR LST's - Got yourself quite a project there Allison drive units are *better* direct replacements for the AR drivers. Go to http://www.allisonacoustics.com/parts.html and you can order samples on line.

Richard