Audion Silver Night 300B

[Puffin]

Hi Franky, good to hear that the Fostex are still doing sterling service in your system......Sterling......did you see what I did there......Audion.......Sterling......yea.....ok

I did indeed have a very nice Pass F1 which I sold after the Fostex went as it only really worked with high efficiency full rangers, it having been developed to drive lowthers etc.

[Frankyc2003]

Hi Franky, good to hear that the Fostex are still doing sterling service in your system......Sterling......did you see what I did there......Audion.......Sterling......yea.....ok

I did indeed have a very nice Pass F1 which I sold after the Fostex went as it only really worked with high efficiency full rangers, it having been developed to drive lowthers etc.

Hi Rob, Aha! Yes Sterling! The guy I bought the Silver Night from is a 92 years old audiophile. He had a Silver Night and a Sterling. He kept the Sterling because it is more efficient.
Your Pass amplifier was lovely I remember. So crisp and clean.
Was it a hard build?

[YNWaN]

Well, yes quite right. This guy did burn 2 resistors in the course of 18 years career. I wonder if there is anything that could be done to remedy this?
Is is the design? or the original choice of components?

In your case two resistors isn't much but I have heard a number of stories of Silver Nights going pop and have been told that this is because some of the components are run rather near the edge of their operating envelope. One thing I would check is that those overheating resistors haven't cooked any other components that were close to them (like that yellow capacitor in your picture).

[Ali Tait]

Surprised that you'd find a 300b amp with better bass than an 845.I used to have a Mr Liang 845, and the bass was one of the best things about it. Better ouput transformers required perhaps.

[Haselsh1]

I had an Audion 300B SEL back in 1997 whilst they were still being built in Brighton and was using it with a pair of Klipsch KG3.5's. The sound on Eddie Reader's song 'Dear John' was truly awesome with the vocals being the best I have ever heard to date. Even now, so many years later, I have not moved forward from that sound. The midrange was just so open and natural, it was literally the best I have ever heard. OK, so the treble and the bass were not up to the same standard but back then I didn't care. I would dearly love such an amplifier again but I very much doubt that 8 Watts are enough.

[Haselsh1]

Reading further into this thread I see that the Sterling ETSE gets a mention too. I had one of those around 2003 and would certainly have kept it were it not for my speakers which were really not getting the best out of it. Once again, the midrange was to die for. Acoustic Alchemy sounded so wonderful using this amplifier. So it wasn't quite as soft as the 300B however the midrange and vocals were stunning and very typical of an EL34 amplifier run in single ended mode and triode configuration. Truly lovely device.

[Puffin]

Hi Rob, Aha! Yes Sterling! The guy I bought the Silver Night from is a 92 years old audiophile. He had a Silver Night and a Sterling. He kept the Sterling because it is more efficient.
Your Pass amplifier was lovely I remember. So crisp and clean.
Was it a hard build?

No it was a very simple build which is why it appealed to me.....being....well..... Simple!

I had a very helpful chap on here who lived fairly near who was building an F5 and he sourced all the top notch components for the build (Dale resistors, M Cap caps, Panasonics for the power supply etc etc) The boards (the cheapest part of the build by far!) were sourced from Peter Daniels on Diyaudio. The massive transformer was from Canterbury Windings.

I bought some F4 boards at the same time (which is not really an amplifier at all) which I keep meaning to get around to building sometime. They are supposed to be very valve like.

[walpurgis]

For me jumping from SS amps to valve was a turning point. I never looked back!

I've done the opposite. Going from exclusively using valves for many years, back to mainly using Class A solid state (though I still own valve amps). I've experienced no deterioration in sound. Far from it.

[Frankyc2003]

Surprised that you'd find a 300b amp with better bass than an 845.I used to have a Mr Liang 845, and the bass was one of the best things about it. Better ouput transformers required perhaps.

yes very surprising indeed. your mr liang is probably very similar to my yarland. another case of synergy?

[Ali Tait]

The Liang was a bit different to the norm, the transformers being wound in-house. Weighed over 50 kilos!

I had the opportunity to try a pair of James and a pair of AE output transformers against the stock trannies, was very little in it. The AE's were slightly better, but only slightly. The James were not really any better from memory. Which made the stock trannies rather good IMHO.

Walked all over 4k's worth of Unison Research 845 amp at an Owston.