K, here's the deal.  I have a friend coming in from Japan end of June.  I'm going to order a set of Tango ITs for him to bring over for testing which will then be used in my amp.  I need to know the following.
 
Who wants to wait for end of testing to get their Tangos in case the cheaper Us made ones sound as good or better, and who wants to just go for it and get their Tangos now without having either reconfirmed the original Levi build or doing a side by side versus the future TBD US made ITs?  I need to know to make arrangements w/ my guy.
 
Bear in mind the following development.  As of now, Jack is unable to replicate the ITs Craig wants, there performance is pretty messed up.  Craig is looking into Cinemag to do the job.  Craig thinks they can do just as well as Tango for much much less, he said that about Jack too but that didn't work out. 
 
So far Jack's psOPTS are good to go from my understanding.  If they don't pass muster once I get the Tango It's hooked we'll go from there, but the measures and early listening suggest they should be fine as best we can tell atm.

Weren't the Tangos gonna be like $1200 tops? How much is significantly cheaper at that point? I for one just wanna get the ball rolling already. Since the Tangos are the known and proven Levi original, why are we testing other stuff repeatedly just 'hoping' it may sound 'as good', possibly worse...I suppose that's a never-ending circle if you let it be. I say just go for the Tangos, but on the other hand, if you're pretty convinced 'better sound' is just around the corner, I suppose we should take a look at that-though it seems the original build was what we were all in for in the first place...

-Daniel

edit: Anax-I've been meaning to ask you abaout your thoughts on the 009/Electra vs. the HD800/Levi. Thoughts?

If we go for the Tangos now, will it speed things up for our amp build?  If so, I'll just get the Tangos.

You are confusing some claims here.  I did not say Jack talks out his ass and doesn't know anything about transformers.  I said Jack is talking out his ass about IMD being a problem for these particular Tangos that we actually have built and heard but he has not.  It was my idea to get Jack to make out OPTs for this project using partial silver secondaries in place of the 2.7 Tangos.  So do take my comments in proper perspective.  That said, I do appreciate your input and feedback.

IMD should be more obvious than say even order distortion to a trained ear, at least wrt audible levels.  Obviously if people want to chase four decimal places for the sake of marketing, we wouldn't put ears into he equation.  If someone wants to make a claim about an amp or transformer I have heard, but they have not and only made a judgement based on what they think is going on in a tranformer they don't have, I'm going to see if it jives w/ such a claim.  If Jack hypothesizes high IMD w/o a bench measurement or the actul transofrmer and me and Craig hear the most resolving, clear and balanced amp out there, we have to wonder wtf he is talking about.

Nah, we are long beyond the saturation discussion.  Not sure if you read the other thread, we discussed core size and amorphous materials and saturation there.  This is actually the third thread on this amp and was just made public recently.  This discussion has nothing to do with saturation and the amp exhibited no issues such issues like roll off or brightness.  If anything, he has a greater concern about the amount of capacitance from what he believes Tango is using for its winding technique.  Jack's latest thing is IMD which he tried to obliterate in his latest GM70 three stage SET amp.  It did not sound good at the SHOW.  You can talk to Craig or Jack about it, it's some new circuit designed specifically to crush IMD levels.  I believe it has quite a bit of plate resistance in the circuit though.

You guys want me to steal some single crystal nickel superalloys from the lab to wind your own transformers?