Western Electric Monoblock Amplifier

Discussion in 'Audio Hardware' started by DaveySR, Aug 19, 2018.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. DaveySR

    DaveySR Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    Manimal, mreeter and jeffrey walsh like this.
  2. Manimal

    Manimal Forum Resident

    Location:
    Southern US
    Man!! Those things are tasty:)
     
    DaveySR and bluesaddict like this.
  3. Tullman

    Tullman Senior Member

    Location:
    Boston MA
    Those look nice. $62,ooo. Ouch! Just replacing the tubes would cost a fortune.
     
  4. stereoguy

    stereoguy Its Gotta Be True Stereo!

    Location:
    NYC
    $62,000 ?? Somehow I think I could get pretty great sounding amps for $6000.
     
  5. Salectric

    Salectric Senior Member

    Location:
    Maryland
    What ever those amps may sound like, they are certainly nothing like a real Western Electric amp. The mfr’s website has a photo of the inside—-printed circuit boards, solid state rectifiers, and WIMA and Hovland film caps. Give me a break!
     
    dirtymac, Rolltide, McLover and 2 others like this.
  6. McLover

    McLover Senior Member

    Truer words have never been said. Not how the real Western Electric would have built these. That wiring on a real Western Electric build would be neat enough, and the build quality would have been worth $6200.
     
    62caddy and caracallac like this.
  7. stereoguy

    stereoguy Its Gotta Be True Stereo!

    Location:
    NYC
    You know, an American Audio Company should get one of the original 1930s WE amps, reverse engineer it, and build them for sale EXACTLY as WE did. They would sell a bunch of them to true audio folks, especially in Japan.
     
  8. allied333

    allied333 Audiophile

    Location:
    nowhere
    Cheaper than the real Western Electric 300 amps my friend may sell for $100K.
     
  9. SKBubba

    SKBubba Forum Resident

    Location:
    Tennessee
    I'm guessing the person who buys these won't be showing them off saying "don't they sound great?" or "don't these look beauiful?" but rather "do you know how much these cost?"
     
    SandAndGlass likes this.
  10. SandAndGlass

    SandAndGlass Twilight Forum Resident

    It is one thing paying stupid money as a collector for circa 1930's rare and coveted audio gear. It is an entirely different thing to pay stupid prices for modern day versions of the same gear, that is neither cost effective nor does it have a collectible value.

    As specially when you use PCB's and SS rectifier's and such major changes from the original topologies.
     
    Dave, 62caddy and caracallac like this.
  11. harby

    harby Forum Resident

    Location:
    Portland, OR, USA
    So which Chinese company licensed the name?
     
  12. BIGGER Dave

    BIGGER Dave Forum Resident

    Not sure what you mean. The Western Electric factory is located in Roseville GA USA.

    Western Electric - The Company
     
  13. SquishySounds

    SquishySounds Yo mama so fat Thanos had to snap twice.

    Location:
    New York
    Those are knock-offs?
     
  14. Mugrug12

    Mugrug12 The Jungle Is a Skyscraper

    Location:
    Massachusetts

    Maybe a different company that bought the rights to the name though? From Wikipedia (under the "legacy" chapter):

    Western Electric - Wikipedia

    As of 2013, the stylized Western Electricbrand name survives as the trademark of the Western Electric Export Corporation, a privately owned high-end audio company in Rossville, Georgia.
     
    Rolltide likes this.
  15. Doug Walton

    Doug Walton Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    I agree. I sure did.
     
    Last edited: Aug 19, 2018
    McLover and caracallac like this.
  16. Salectric

    Salectric Senior Member

    Location:
    Maryland
    Not knockoffs. Just something different. Probably closer in sound quality to a modern Canary tube amp that WE. Canary also used Hovland coupling caps and solid state rectifiers.

    I am not saying these new amps sound bad. For all I know, they may sound very nice, but they just have nothing in common with real Western Electruc amps other than the name.
     
    McLover likes this.
  17. Larry I

    Larry I Senior Member

    Location:
    Washington, D.C.
    They are being sold (don't know about the manufactuer) by the company that holds a license to the Western Electric name. That company also bought the manufacturing gear for making some of Western Electric tubes (and, I believe, some of the critical parts for the tubes were also bought). They new amps are not knock-offs because they look nothing like classic WE gear; they are being sold as new gear.

    I have no personal experience with what they sound like. A local dealer who is big into reconditioning and rebuilding WE gear heard a "new" WE amp several years ago. He said that it actually sounded pretty good. I don't know how closely related this amp is to the one he heard, but, it does suggest that the company "might" be putting out something that sounds good. Whether or not $62k is a fair price is another matter. These days you can find six-figure amps on the market so it has company.
     
  18. McLover

    McLover Senior Member

    Yes, Likely a nice amplifier (though highly overpriced). Likely nice sounding. But just not designed or built to real Western Electric standards. WE never would have used a PC board in a tube amplifier ever. As a main example. And $62,000 way expensive for it.
     
    Salectric likes this.
  19. Larry I

    Larry I Senior Member

    Location:
    Washington, D.C.
    I don't know about whether or not PC boards are good or bad in tube amps. I like the look and craftmanship of point-to-point wiring and the old school use of turret boards instead of a PC board, but I would not say that there is no place for PC boards in high-end amps. The ultra expensive Audio Note amps, which also sound great, use PC boards. They even use PC boards in the way I particular dislike the usage--they have tube sockets attached directly to the boards. This cannot be an attempt to keep cost down, and there must be sonic reasons for its usage because nothing else in the way Audio Note does things suggests that cost cutting is a primary concern.
     
  20. 62caddy

    62caddy Forum Resident

    Location:
    PA
    Safety & environmental regulations (rightly or wrongly) are very different than those in place half a century ago (or longer) so it's no longer possible to build equipment exactly as it had been done originally. Such "retro" or "revival" equipment (such as reissues from others like Marantz & McIntosh) are actually completely "modern" in every sense of the word, except it has been adapted to operate on tube technology with a bow to period cosmetics to complete the visual effect.

    In many ways, performance of these units is arguably superior to the originals however many will also assert that it's the distortions present in original versions that give them their special sonic characteristics. Personally, I cannot see the rational behind spending big bucks for modern retro equipment unless doing it for reasons other than sonics- which is fine - if you can afford to indulge your aesthetic sensibilities.

    It's also unlikely to have the value retention and/or appreciation potential of its vintage counterpart and depreciation is likely to be severe, at least initially.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2018
  21. DaveySR

    DaveySR Forum Resident Thread Starter

    Location:
    Pennsylvania
    I'd like to support their U.S. design, manufacturing and assembly, but I can't get past: 'is it really 50-60 thousand dollars better than anything I've ever had in my system?', (and the fact that I would never spend 60 thousand dollars on 2 amplifiers).
    I, too, have a problem with PCBs in this design at that price, but if it was all hardwired it would probably be 100 grand.
     
  22. Rolltide

    Rolltide Forum Resident

    Location:
    Vallejo, CA
    I had high hopes for this WE rebranding, but I'm not sure how successful the endeavor will be.

    It's true that all of the ultra-high prestige brands had to start somewhere, but that's just it, they started somewhere. It seems as if these folks bought the name Western Electric, and decided along with the name they were purchasing the gravitas required to sell $62K amplifiers right out the gate. I'm sort of picturing a power point deck entitled "Rich Asians are crazy and will buy anything we put this name on".
     
    62caddy and Doug Walton like this.
  23. Doug Walton

    Doug Walton Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    LOL
     
  24. 62caddy

    62caddy Forum Resident

    Location:
    PA
    At least with McIntosh, the reissued stuff is still built by the same company, at the same location and at least in the case of the MC275, was designed by the same engineer who designed the original. Can't ask for better pedigree than that.
     
  25. Larry I

    Larry I Senior Member

    Location:
    Washington, D.C.
    The McIntosh 275 might be built by the same company, but, is it really the same quality. In a "How its Made" episode on one of the cable channels, I saw a pretty disturbing video on the making of the 275. It showed what were described as output transformers being wound. They had something like six cores on a bobbin that spun and wound the transformer cores in just a few seconds. What happened to hand would cores with interleaved windings and paper insulation between each level of windings? Equally disturbing was the way connections were made to the input jacks and to the output binding posts; the connections were made by a snap on PC board that made all the connections in one shot--efficient, yes, but is that a high quality connection?
     
    Salectric likes this.
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page

molar-endocrine