Thanking the Firebottle

Yesterday I had a fantastic day out in the Black County, not to the museum nor to the Zoo but to Alan’s (Firebottle) part time UK home in the West Midlands.

Alan had very kindly offered to look at my poorly pre amp. In all honesty I wasn’t expecting miracles, after all two amp builders/repair agents in Nottingham had looked at it and neither had been able to fix it but to my surprise Alan had the board out in minutes and the problem sorted not much later. I was impressed, very impressed but more was to come

Having fixed the pre amp so quickly there was plenty of time to look at Alan’s Firebottle amps. In all honesty, I have to admit I knew nothing of them.

Sitting on the windowsill was something that to me looked like a relic from the 1950s space age but it turned out to be one of Alan’s earlier OTL amps built into and old equipment case but for me the real star of the show was Alan’s KIN Line/phono pre amp.

The casework on this is simply amazing – real high end and in my opinion streets ahead of much of the commercial equipment I have seen and owned. Inside was equally impressive with home made boards supporting the point to point wiring. Switch able MM/MA inputs too.

Alan seemed rather more keen on his Croft inspired, but not copied, Hybrid AIR power amp. A super linear triode valve driving a MosFET output ! Once again very neat and tidy.

But what impressed me the most was the speakers. Alan did tell me what they were but I cant for the life on me remember all I can say is they were old and stand mounted - looked like 1970s or early 1980s to me. Alan had changed the tweeters and rebalanced the sound by ear – impressive stuff and so was the sound. Loads of detail, tight bass and no boom. Lovely – I could swear I could hear Paul Simon breathing between words.

Then he swapped them out for some B&W floorstanders, they didn’t stay in situ for long. They were clearly not suited to the smaller room – they filled it with sound and were impressive initially but the bass boomed and the detail was lost, I could feel a head ache coming on …..

We played about with pre amps and his AIR power amp let the differences shine through but the best sound of the day was for me when his KIN pre amp was driving his AIR power amp and we were listening to those old speakers.

If only the power amp could be built into the same case as the pre amp.

All my thanks to Alan and his wife, for the their hospitality, the repairs and for giving me a great day out.

Many thanks for the good words Ian, it was very enjoyable to share the day with a fellow enthusiast who has a good ear for the music.

The speakers you talk of are Goodmans Mezzo 3, with a 10 inch bass/mid driver and replacement HF1300 tweeters.
May be considered a slight mismatch as the bass/mid is 8 ohm whilst the tweeters are in fact 4 ohm variants. I do like the sound though :)

Alan's a good dude, I know this to be true.