What would you never buy again? What would you like to own again?

[Pharos]

I tend to agree Steven on valves, having built numerous amps with them, they look nice, comforting, have poorer specs., are inefficient, and need maintenance.

Used my Nelson Jones class A 10+10 for about 5 years and one channel went dead.
Borrowed a friend's Lowther amp, and the bass was uncontrolled, woolly.
Then bought a 303 and the bass in that was also woolly, so I sold it to a BBC engineer.
It turned out that there was a manufactured faulty BC107 that had failed in my own amp, replaced, done.

[Barry]

That's lostroh..... Sorry to be pedantic. IIRC it was pure class A, certainly to 25W. Also IIRC it had an input impedance of only something like 1K!! Definitely no good with a passive

Edit: This is very IIRC... but the Pioneer M90 I believe used very similar circuitry... just not in class A.

Correct concerning the orthography, incorrect concerning the pure Class A. The Lostroh and Otala design is Class A up to 3W (into a 4 Ohm load), and does as you say have an usually low input impedance: 3.4 kOhm.

I built one in the '80s using 2N3055s for the output transistors and drove it successfully with a Quad 44 preamp, the whole powering Quad 57 ESLs.
Sounded wonderful, but did run hot despite using a massive heatsink. Maybe one day I might re-build it as a pair of monoblocks, but since I now use a pair of Levinson ML-2s this doesn't have a high priority.

[Barry]

I tend to agree Steven on valves, having built numerous amps with them, they look nice, comforting, have poorer specs., are inefficient, and need maintenance.

Used my Nelson Jones class A 10+10 for about 5 years and one channel went dead.
Borrowed a friend's Lowther amp, and the bass was uncontrolled, woolly.
Then bought a 303 and the bass in that was also woolly, so I sold it to a BBC engineer.
It turned out that there was a manufactured faulty BC107 that had failed in my own amp, replaced, done.

My experience is the opposite of yours: I built several valve power amps (based on the Mullard designs), as well as the Nelson-Jones 10W Class A design published in Wireless World.

I quickly learnt that it was essential to use the best output transformers available, which then were those made by Parmeko, Partridge or Gardeners. But they were reliable, versatile and sounded good. I still have a Radford STA15 Mk, III, which IMO represents the final refinement of the Mullard 5-20 circuit.

My Nelson-Jones, ran hot, was unreliable and was never happy driving Quad 57s. I gave it away and replaced it with the power section of the Sugden A21 (I knew someone who knew Jim Sugden, so was able to get the PCBs and mains transformer at cost), and later the Lohsroh and Otala design.

[Haselsh1]

How did you find the sound from the Claymore?

S.

I remember the Claymore being a coarse, nasty sounding amplifier with very dubious quality control over the finish of the front panel. I replaced it with a Musical Fidelity A100, way way better.

[Haselsh1]

My experience is the opposite of yours: I built several valve power amps (based on the Mullard designs), as well as the Nelson-Jones 10W Class A design published in Wireless World.

I quickly learnt that it was essential to use the best output transformers available, which then were those made by Parmeko, Partridge or Gardeners. But they were reliable, versatile and sounded good. I still have a Radford STA15 Mk, III, which IMO represents the final refinement of the Mullard 5-20 circuit.

My Nelson-Jones, ran hot, was unreliable and was never happy driving Quad 57s. I gave it away and replaced it with the power section of the Sugden A21 (I knew someone who knew Jim Sugden, so was able to get the PCBs and mains transformer at cost), and later the Lohsroh and Otala design.

Barry, my experience is the same as yours with regard to valve amplifiers. Fabulous sound quality but very expensive, no maintenance required apart from new valves every five years and an excellent spec with regard to the aforementioned sound quality. Each to their own I guess. I just find tranny amps generally boring.

[jandl100]

I remember the Claymore being a coarse, nasty sounding amplifier with very dubious quality control over the finish of the front panel. I replaced it with a Musical Fidelity A100, way way better.

My goodness!
I had a Claymore Mk1 - the 50wpc with the somewhat clunky fascia.
I thought it very good - a smooth and powerfully solid sound. No hint of coarseness at all - in fact a little less smooth would have been welcome!
It's a funny old hobby.

[Haselsh1]

My goodness!
I had a Claymore Mk1 - the 50wpc with the somewhat clunky fascia.
I thought it very good - a smooth and powerfully solid sound. No hint of coarseness at all - in fact a little less smooth would have been welcome!
It's a funny old hobby.

Jerry, it sure is. Meat and poison spring to mind.

[Haselsh1]

Of course though my only comparison at the time was the Musical Fidelity A100 which purely in terms of sound quality absolutely obliterated the Claymore. The level of difference was massive at that time which would have been around 1988. Since then though things have changed so much and not always for the better. I remember back then though I was using the Claymore with Musical Fidelity MC4 loudspeakers, the early MkI version with the clear bass/mid. The front end was a Cambridge Audio CD2. I can't remember my vinyl front end of that time so probably not that good.

[Pharos]

I agree with Shaun about running hot, spit would just bubble on the heatsinks, but the reliability of mine was very good. However I did not stick with Nelson-Jones' layout and made mine less compact.

Its bass was tighter than both the Lowther and the 303, and the top better than the 405, but the mid not so.
Built in '72, largely whilst stoned, it ran until I sold it to an ex girl friend in '92 and AFAIK ran on.

My experience Barry with Mullard 5-10s was with RS transformers, only a lucky few got Partridges.

[Haselsh1]

I also remember 1997 and my first ever valve pre/power combination. It was a 300B PP power amp and again, the difference between that and what I had owned before was staggering it was just so different. This I used with Rogers LS3/5a's with an Arcam 8SE CD player, the one that was HDCD compatible. Front end now was an Alphason Sonata.