There's a guy on here, Dave from Dave's World of Fun Stuff. He does guitar/bass repair videos and he once told a story of how one night when touring in Canada, the hotel was so cold he had to bring his Ampeg SVT up to his room and use it as a space heater.
Aaaah, I always thought those glass tubes were Aurora Boreales simulators that was made for getting relaxed by watching it in a dark room, and the input was for the control of the simulation.. Now, being def is hard but my buddy that tells me this sais that the 'audio' is so bad that the blind ones have nothing but pain to get from this video..! huh, i like it tho!
No, to my surprise the DCG1/250 do not preheat - and therefore they light up, when switching the amplifier on - you can see this in an other video. The six DCG4/1000 in the back are switched via a delay circuit with a special tube (front reight) and do preheat. Where such amplifiers have been used - If it was a prewar amplifier, it would have driven two "Blatthallers" - but after war, this is from 1955, I can not imagine, where it might have been operated.
I wish I had 2 of these amplifiers, a pair of JBL or similar stage monitor speakers (a lot of them are easily capable of handling this amp at full volume!) and an sacd or dvd audio disc (and player) of Widor's toccata and a big enough room in a place far away enough as to not scare or disturb anyone. the 32' organ stop could probably literally blow light bulbs and break window panes but my god would it be amazing! 1812 overture would be fun too with the cannon shots!
That's one hell of a tube amp, if I had one like that I'd listen to it all day long! One question though, are the output tubes red plating, or is that normal for that to happen on one of these?
Usually these amps would drive an array of horn speakers at a stadium or a park I got hooked on the big bands music listening to an amp with 2 pairs push-pull of 807's on the early 60's, my curiosity is what are the pair of output tubes they seem to be a pair of transmitting tetrodes by the way this amp could also be used to plate modulate a 1KW AM transmitter
Wow, what a rare find... Very nice. Wished I had one. Those look like 4-400 outputs (?). At 1kW out, that's probably fairly conservative for those valves.
@TheVukovic111 Build in the 50ties when Philips was on his best! Here huge transformers but Philips has build in the fifties also tube amplifiers without transformers, you could find those in television receivers. Indeed, two mono amplifiers makes stereo, no connection with each other required.
It looks like it just shrugs off 250w, on some of the other tests I've seen (with organ music) you can see the blue cloud in the rectifiers glowing brighter and moving.
@gatomas WRONG 9 Pin (Noval) tubes existed in 1955 for sure. They were introduced in the late 1940's (e.g: 12AU7 - first reference: 18.Oct.1946 : Electron Tube Registration List). The octal tubes there are early metal base EL34 (no 6550 crap, they never had metal bases only new production ones) . EL34 was introduced around 1949/50 ( First Sources: Aug.1950 : Funk-Technik (FT) # 15 May.1949 : -- Original-techn. papers.) The Amp is original, nothing new is added be careful with such comments.
There is just something about these old tube pieces that scare the hell out of me. The extreme risk of being shocked and killed from so many things open to touch.
with high efficiency speakers, that amplifier could have filled a stadium, the Washington mall, or probably an entire battle ship. Do you know where this came from, and how in the world did you acquire it?
I actually have a pair of mercury vapor rectifiers in my old collection of parts from my ham radio days but I have never seen globe tubes like those. If I remember right you have to have a timer to allow the filament to vaporize the mercury before the B+ is turned on or you will blow the tube. Your amplifier must be for an auditorium or theatre?
Thanks for your comments! The amplifier can only be operated at 3-phase-mains. I don´t "use" this amplifier, I only enjoy it once a while - at low output and the speaker shown in the video, a two way assembly with a max. 250W 15-inch Eminence bass-speaker
check for xrays coming off them old high power tubes! When they get old hard voltage drops across em, rays come out possibly, get a geiger counter and check, for real
Still some questions: Is the Amp 1-phase or 3-phase mains? (220V or 380V) What you do with this amp? subwoofer....;) ? 1k mono.... Impressive Amp anyway if I have one someday. I would power it up on cold winter days...may with a little more dc-bias...As I do it now with my 6c33 amp. It´s (more or less) a 600W heater with sound repro capability ;)) Thanx for this video!!!
HV rectifier tubes in an xray system used to emit xrays from the tubes, through a metal tank, this was up around 30kV, not down where these are running which is why they came up with solid state sticks string of diodes to replace em. Just like old CT units gave off xrays they where up around 23kV Geiger counter will see this energy of xray it's not that high kev, or will an ion type meter.
at 1:48 seems odd 3 9 pin tubes that look like 6BQ5,s and the octal base tubes that look like a pair of 6550's they didn't exist in 1955 either they are new aditions or the amp is newer.
And this Amp would not in any kind beeing overloaded in home use ;) The rectiviers are impressive!!! I have four DCG here, but I´ve never used them. May someday I will build up a PP-845 amp with the DCGs, but I need to drive the 845 with grid current, that´s the point...Interstage transformer....not sure by now...also need a good O-T.... Your amp would be the "tube-lover" solutions to drive low efficency speakers, like the infinity kappa 8...
Agree,would be fun to know how this PA amp would perform against an pioneer sx1980 and similar stuff from the eighties. however the test would go,i would happily and proudly have this in the livingroom instead! and as a party trick you could take out a 1960s geiger counter and meausure how much radiation this old baby cranks out on full volume!!!
Hi there, sounds nice, at low levels, not expectet by a tube amp of this power, must be hard work to design a good output transformer at this power. Minimum load is regardless unless the output tubes are not beeing overloaded. You can easily drive 4 ohm speakers at any "home compatible" SPL :)) I build up a 6x 6C33C amp (300W max.) the OT has 4 and 8 ohm taps but i never need the 4 ohm...eaven with 4 ohm load on 8 ohm tap I get nearly full swing @ save anode currents.
Aaaah, I always thought those glass tubes were Aurora Boreales simulators that was made for getting relaxed by watching it in a dark room, and the input was for the control of the simulation.. Now, being def is hard but my buddy that tells me this sais that the 'audio' is so bad that the blind ones have nothing but pain to get from this video..! huh, i like it tho!
Surprisingly little distortion? Dude that's a 1kw power amplifier, once you drive that into distortion the shards of your blown out windows have already killed half your neighborhood and you probably caused an earthquake of around 4 on the Richter scale. If anything would cause noticeable distortion at reasonable levels it's your dying speakers
