dklsplace said:
Kap'n said:
....Made from Weber kits.
What's your take on the quality of goods in the Weber kits? Particularly the OT's?
OK, let me preface this by stating up-front that I consider Ted a good friend of mine, and I've known him for probably 15-20 years.
I think that the quality of nearly everything in a Weber kit is of excellent quality. If you're trying to build a 100% authentic replica of a 1957 5E3 Deluxe, you're looking in the wrong place. If you're concerned about location of spot welds, number of staples in the grillecloth, etc., go elsewhere.
However, if you're looking for an amp that will give you 90+% of the sound, this is where you go. Ted uses good quality components for the most part. The two places I would suggest swapping out before constructing an amp are the jacks and the pilot light assembly. I didn't think they were up to par, but as my recollection of conversations about these with him were that the standard items people wanted for these were extremely expensive, and that they would drive the cost of the kits up unreasonably. That being said, I'd swap them anyway. There's no sense in replacing these items later. It's a pain in the [nice substitution there - mods], with no tonal gain. IMHO, the resistors and coupling capacitors are as good as anything on the market, and better than a lot of things people use as 'upgrades.'
The other thing I'd mention is that Ted is a tweaker by heart. I think his philosphy of the kits is not to give people an ultimately tweaked amp. I think the idea is to give the customer everything you need to make an amp that sounds close to the originals given off-the shelf components. For example, he provides decent quality current manufacture tubes (Shuguang, mostly) to get the kit going. He knows that most of the folks building will try new tubes, etc, to find their tonal nirvana. What comes with the kit is supposed to be a baseline.
OK, now to the transformers.
I think that people greatly underestimate the amount of work Ted's put into the transformers. Yes, they're made offshore. Yes, they're inexpensive. But he's done a lot of R&D and prototyping. I would put my Weber-kit 5E7 Bandmaster (100% kit, except for jacks, pilot light assembly and tubes) up against any amp out there.
And, to make sure I wasn't missing anything, I did put a Mercury Magnetics output transformer in my Weber 5E3 kit after trying the one tha came with the kit.. I :think: it made a difference. It wasn't huge, but I think it's better. Is it worth the money? Maybe on the 5E3, since the MM tranny is pretty cheap for that one, but I'm not considering changing my Bandmaster, that's for sure.
I've ended up making way more substantial tweaks to my 5E3. I've discovered, I really don't like a 5E3 in it's regular state. With the tweaks, I like the amp a lot. Did the MM transformer make a difference? Maybe, maybe not.
Also, FWIW, after building/modding amps for fifteen years, I don't think I have golden ears by any means, but I think they're pretty good (both my ears, and the Weber transformers).