Close Window

 

Let me just say one humble statement here: I was also shooting for the same sound you are looking for. Our newer products had gotten away from this lush sweet thing I remember with David's older designs. I wanted to get back to the roots. I know for a fact, that I have done this with the Stingray with the new output transformer design, new input stage and way less feedback is giving me that sound I wanted so bad. Tone. Big fat vocal placement, and holy cow, the bass... you will not believe what solidity and rhythm we have reached with this little guy. He sure doesn't sound like a little guy, just trust me.

We've been building EL84 amplifiers for 15 years and to my ears they always sounded whimpy. Now I got thinking, what's up with this? It ain't the tubes' fault. Tubes are linear and can go almost DC to daylight. So we got to work on this with the output trannies and that new input stage and boy we got bass swingin' now. At this past Stereophile HIFI '98 show, we put the Stingray up against the 807 monos we build which are 4 times the price and three times the power. The 807's got frikkin' murdered by the lil' Stingray. This means I got some work to do to bring the 807's up to snuff with our new thinking here. I know the tonal balance I want and I think you want the same thing too.

Truth be told, I do listen to a lot of rock 'n' roll and I don't want no whimps especially in the bass section. I want to be able to tell a kick drum apart from a bass line and I don't want the vocal to get too much in my face breathing down my neck. I listen for the individual beads on a gourd shaker and the decay on a triangle. I'm very happy with what we have achieved tonally on the STINGRAY and hope you will be too.

EveAnna Manley