Frack. 


I really miss my BA right now, so on the one hand I just want something quick.  On the other hand I plan for this to be my last dynamic tube headphone amp purchase and don't want to be looking over my shoulder.


So to clarify, the difference between ~$4700 and $9500 is OPT's, the rectifiers, the fanciness of included 2A3, and Joel laying hands on it?


Would you be coordinating both builds or only the Levi 2A3x4?  I have much less confidence in Craig and Joel getting anything done together without you lighting a fire under them.

Long story short, I'll be handling both. 

The difference, so far, is OPT (Joel sourcing both IT/OPT), included premium tubes, Moth motif/design/build quality/treatment, etc.  It may or may not be a 2A3 or 300B amp, dunno right now.  Left and Right hand are supposed to do lunch sometime in the near future.  Both amps use same rectifiers as of this moment in time.  I had fight hard on the PS.  The price actually went up a little because it uses twice as many parts, is more complex and takes up more space for sheet metal and the tubes cost a lot more than what was in the original Leviathan. 

I was going to include Moth buyers in the Tango buy but not sure if that's wise now as it's basically in Product development.

No, there are only two.  The Leviathan as I stated, and the Moth build, whatever it becomes.  If you look back, you'll see the Levi variations described in my prior post, that's old news and I killed the Electraprint 2A3.  I told Craig if he went that route I was out.  I'm doing Tango Interstages and if anyone want something else, they can do it on their own.  If anyone wants to buy a Ferrari body with a Ford Windsor engine in it, feel free.  The Tango interstages were never something to be compromised on, EVER.  That was absolutely the last place in the circuit anyone should be looking to save some money.  Craig got the idea somehow from certain people feeding him all sorts of ideas about what he thought he could get away with for ease of manufacture and cheapness.  Some asshole even told him to throw capacitors in it instead of interstage trasnformers.  I'd rather just stick to my Super7.  If people are after sidegrades, that's fine.  That was never the intention of this project.

If anyone gets enough people to do the all EP 2A3x4 then he'll do a batch.  Craig builds batches.  I am not doing anything w/ that unless more than 5 people want to do that amp for $3300.  Then I'll organize an all EP Levi along side.

 

I talked to Craig about this (fyi I haven't been following the 2a3 thread if you mean something over on the other site),  In a sense, the Levi is flagship but Craig has no flagships.  Every amp he has on the webpage or has been built can be ordered again as long as you get a minimum of 10 folks to form a run to do so.  Therefore, in essence, he doesn't have a model lineup w/ a hierarchy as he sees it.  So while the Levi is the most transparent of his designs so far, there is no designated crown on the model lineup as there is no model lineup per Craig's thinking to begin with.  Ugh...

I decided to forgo the Tango OPTs for few reasons.  It had nothing to do w/ being hamstrung though that would have been the right read if they did the all EP version and the all Tango version for Moth, a dichotomy which no longer exists after my having resolved the matters confusion to much pain and agony.  There is no defined model lineup, so pick what you want to build as long as everyone  for that single run agrees to every part, period, the END, FIN.

I thought I went over the transformer considerations in the other thread but in case I forgot, I'll do it here.  The Tango OPT, while measurably superior in many ways, has a few issues.  One, sourcing and price.  Not really an issue since we are getting the Tango It some way or another.  Two, based on my listening to the original Levi, there were some discrepancies.  The tone color was too similar between instruments in a laid-back/pleasant sounding sense.  Even Craig noticed this as he called it 'dry' which is completely the wrong word but I got his meaning to be the same as mine after interrogating him.  This is of course despite measuring phenomenally from 15-35khz @ -1dB.  Despite sounding good, it wasn't quite 'correct'.  This is why the decision to go all Tango for the Moth pissed me off because that wasn't a SQ decision but a perceived value/bling/audio cachet decision.  Also, there was a slight grunge or fuzz in the lower mids/upper bass.  I scoured forever trying to figure out if the core was too big or something else was wrong on the original Levi (old tubes, PS design, etc).  Only a few weeks ago, Craig said, 'oh btw, the Tango OPT had a bit more bass distortion.'  Gee thanks for telling me now!  Maybe that was it, maybe it was something else.  Someone had volunteered to buy a set of Tango ITs and OPTs for our testing but that fell through too so we lost another 2 weeks waiting for something that was never going to materialize anyway.  Otherwise we would have had the samples in a few weeks ago already.  The Tango OPTs are not the jewel in the Tango crown, the Tango ITs are the jewel of the transformer world, period.  Thats why we searched for months for alternatives to the Tango OPTs.  Hashimoto was below spec, Lundahl ended up being mediocre though better than most, Tamura and Tribute use exotic amorphous core materials which to my further study and analysis were a combination of side-graded sound and marketing BS.  Audio Note is expensive as a mothereffer and only worth it if you go all in, even then good luck getting matched channels.  Even one of their top amps is channel imbalanced and rolled so they can kiss my ass.  We ended up coming back to Jack at ElectraPrint with three possible different designs.  Those of us that have heard his transformers know, they don't have the tone color issue that the Tango had.  Going with Jack even allowed us to spec the core and windings specifically for the Leviathan build more ideally than the specs on the Tango 2.7 which induces more distortion and resistance.  Jack also gives us the ability to save costs over the Tango and include partial silver in the secondary windings.  The Tangos can't do that.  So in essence, we sacrifice a C-cor e potted Tango and go with a EI-core non-potted EP but with ideal impedance specs and adding silver to the mix.  Unlike with cables, whether you believe in silver or not, silver is a real and measurable impact on transformer construction and performance that nobody can claim is snake oil.  It's actually where the idea came from to market silver in cables.  Audio Note charges like another 4,000 British pounds per pair for silver in their transformers as an upgrade!

We are waiting for the finished Jack OPTs to sample before we close the book on the Levi build.  Jack does make megabuck transformers for megabuck amps, if people go to the SHOW or RMAF they will hear them.  He knows what he's doing but he's a California redneck living in the hills instead of a 10th generation Japanese Sushi chef who's family has been winding robotically perfect copper 20 hours a day ever since the Meiji Restoration.