From boz–(at)–zstarnet.com Tue Apr 22 12:50:08 CDT 1997
Article: 29172 of rec.audio.tubes
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From: boz–(at)–zstarnet.com (Gerald Stombaugh)
Newsgroups: rec.audio.tubes
Subject: Re: Leo Fender was dumb, but lucky.
Date: Tue, 22 Apr 1997 15:43:59 GMT
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On Tue, 22 Apr 1997 12:05:17 GMT, cign–(at)–elios.phy.OhioU.Edu (Dave
Cigna) wrote:
>
>Bill Bolton
>>cign–(at)–elios.phy.OhioU.Edu (Dave Cigna) wrote:
>>
>>
>Mythical Belief #1:
> Great vintage guitar amps sound the way they do because they are
> built from cheap, underrated components that are pushed beyond
> their specifications. The result is magical and could only have
> been arrived at by dumb luck.
>
>Mythical Belief #2:
> The builders of great vintage guitar amps were basically clueless
> idiots that more or less just copied schematics from tube manuals
> and hoped for the best. They thought they were building hi-fi amps,
> but luckily for us, they were too stupid to be successful and
> ended up with great sounding guitar amps completely by accident.
>
>
The truth as I knew it.
Leo Fender was very demanding and knowledgable in his
requirements for his amplifiers. I designed power and output
transformers for Leo and others in the industry for 36 years.
A consumer product certainly has to be designed with cost
in mind, but all producers pushed every vendor for an improved
product at a reasonable price.
For instance:
Leo used to buy speakers from Jensen when he could have paid
less elswhere but only Jensen could last a reasonable length of
time for this test.
Plug a 16 ohm 15″ whoofer into the 120V line and see how long it will
last. Ohms Law says 120V x 120V divided by 16 equals 900 WATTS.
power. The life of the speaker is listed in seconds rather than years
and you learn a whole lot about that speaker.
Fred Mergner was the Chief Engineer of Fisher Radio and George
Meyerle was Chief Engineer of Harmon Kardon. Those two gentlemen
were so demanding concerning the sound quality of an amp that they
drove their vendors to frustration. You would be innovative,
progressive and COST EFFECTIVE or they would find someone who was.
The TV people, especially Magnavox were intensely interested in sound
quality even in their normal TV receivers.
The wonderful part of that era was that it was designed here, produced
here and enjoyed world wide. Our economy today would be infinitely
better if we were again designing and producing consumer items.
Jerry Stombaugh
boz–(at)–zstarnet.com
time
