VA3 Valve Amplifier
RRP$ 1999
Now everyone can afford the luxury of a valve amplifier. Aussie hi fi have done it once again by making a limited number of these very special amplifiers available to their eBay customers. Without sounding like a smooth talking car salesperson you really do owe it to yourself to experience valve amplification on your favourite speakers and these will only be made available on eBay in very limited numbers, so don’t sit on your hands for too long or you will simply miss out.
Valve amplifiers are great sounding, well-designed precision made instruments. They can make sweet music for you for up to 30 years with normal maintenance and periodic tube replacements. All output transformer cores used are made with premium grade silicon steel for superior sonics and excellent frequency response.
For the music enthusiast who is thinking about getting into tubes for the first time or an experienced tube enthusiast who wants more power or another system, these amps are excellent choices. They feature a one year warranty on parts with excellent support.
The VA3 is an integrated tube amp with output terminals for both 4 and 8 OHM speakers. The VA3 delivers 30 Watts per channel and is designed for high fidelity performance for those who really want to recapture the best in two channel listening. Suitable for rock or complex jazz music right through to outstanding vocal reproduction.
Sonically, it is a great amplifier and is known for its bass extension and its ability to focus vocals across the spectrum, i.e., not just focused in the mid to upper midrange.
Purists would argue that the soundstage created by value amplification is unrivaled.
What is a Vacuum Tube?
The vacuum tube has been used for longer than stereophonic sound has been around. A vacuum tube is somewhat like a light bulb: constructed of glass and inside this glass envelope there is a heated filament. The interior of the tube has all the air evacuated (thus the vacuum). The heated filament gives off a glow, which we can see, a little like a light bulb.
However, the light in the tube is just a byproduct of the current flow. Of more importance are the electrons which hover around the heated filament. Vacuum tubes contain other elements which are the real reason for their function. In a basic tube, there is the filament (often called the “cathode”), and a metal strip (called the “anode” or “plate”) situated near the inside edge of the tube.
When a positive voltage (usually in the hundreds of volts) is connected to the plate, the electrons at the cathode, by their negative charge, are attracted to the positive charge of the plate. Flow of electrons from one point to another is called "current" (measured in amperes, or "amps"), and movement of electrons from the cathode to the anode falls into this category.
What Do The Tubes Do?
A tube with just a cathode and anode is called a diode. Since the current can only flow from the cathode to the anode, it is tool, called a rectifier, for changing alternating current, like that which comes from the socket in your wall, to direct current. Current from the wall changes direction of flow 60 times per second (60Hz). Diodes are the fundamental tube in power supplies, which does the job of converting alternating current (AC) to direct current (DC) for use by the amplifier. This rectification suppresses the 60Hz “hum” that you’d hear in your speakers because of the reversal of current flow.
The capacitor stores the rectified current, and feeds it to the gain stage of the amp in measured, smooth amounts. Diodes do not amplify. To do the main job of the amplifier, you need at least one other type of tube. The most common amplification tube is the triode. The triode adds a third element inside the tube, called a grid. The grid has a negative charge applied to it. Because of the grid, electrons from the cathode are repelled and not allowed to flow from the cathode to the anode plate.
So, if the audio signal (a very small voltage) is applied to the grid, and this very small voltage fluctuates with the sound, there will be a fluctuating amount of current flowing between the cathode and anode, in time with the music. Since the anode plate voltage is very high in comparison to the grid voltage, we have amplification! There are other types of amplification tubes such as the pentode, and tetrode. But most audio purists choose the triode for its simplicity and musicality.
WHY WOULD I BUY A VALVE AMPLIFIER?
The bottom line is this amplifier is suited to those people that love their music and really appreciate a full bodied sound, it comes with a single input so a CD player or other source component can be plugged directly in or a pre amp can be added for remote selection of multiple components.
Bid now to secure stocks and save big dollars, remember that these are a strictly limited offer.
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