Monday, September 27, 2010

Lots of shows lately.


It seems these things are back to back lately. Everyone is coming in from the nice summer days and out of the rain of Portland winters. The good thing about that is it brings the people together, indoors, for shows. The "scene" picks up a bit and bands like us get drawn into it. It gives us a chance to roll out new material, equipment, and test the boundaries again. Details for this show are a little hazy but we jumped on last minute. I may be piggy backing on the sound for Plan B this night and in the future maybe pulling a few nights running it here and there. I sure hope so. It would be nice change to do something i enjoy and believe i am good at for work.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Last nights show @ the Megaton House


Last night was the first outing with the, "new" equipment to play shows. Everything seemed to be going fine and then equipment failure. The 2x15" cabinet i have wasn't able to handle the volume and i burned up those speakers. It seems that it should have been able to handle it. I was driving them with the Phase Linear 700b and that claims to be 350 watts a channel. The cabinet was 400 watts @ 8ohms but notice i say was. I must now replace the burned speakers. This time to be certain that it can handle it i will double the wattage up to 800w @ 8ohms. This should make certain that this never happens again.
For those of you who caught us, sorry for the technical problems and i hope you enjoyed the set anyway.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Amp cabinet done.

Fans installed, preamp, and Phase Linear 700B
Pics of front and back. It isn't pretty until you hear it.



Monday, September 20, 2010

Phase Linear 700B


Completely rebuilt by a good man named Edward Blackwood. Here is his site.
http://web.archive.org/web/20071208055327rn_1/hometown.aol.com/PhaseTek/

The 700b had been left to me from someone years ago and has always been somewhat of a pipe dream to me. I had found someone to work on it here in portland and they couldn't fix it so i started searching the interwebs about this heavy thing. That's how i found Edward. Ed was an easy going fellow, amp smarts to the point of making your head spin kinda guy. All of our transactions were via email and telephone conversations. The great thing about this whole thing is that he lived close. Mailing this 65lb amp wasn't going to be cheap. I was in no hurry for this thing to be rebuilt because i had no idea if it could be done.
So i sent it to him. Several weeks later and about $300 in it arrived on my doorstep looking almost bran new. WTF! Amazing.
I tested it right away on a the 2x15, 400w, 8ohm cabinet right away. Loud, clear, and i was astonished.
If you ever come across any old Phase Linear stuff really consider investing in it. If it doesn't work, scrape some money together and talk to Ed. He is awesome.

Here is a copy of the Wikipedia article. It gives a little history.


Phase Linear was an audio equipment manufacturer founded by Bob Carver in 1970. While primarily known as a power amplifier company it also produced several innovative preamplifers, tuners and the Andromeda loudspeaker.

History
Its first location was a small building at 405 Howell Way in Edmonds, Washington. The first amplifier produced was the Phase Linear 700. With 350 watts per channel it soon became the standard amplifier used in recording studios, sound reinforcement companies, professional musicians and audiophiles. It had a retail price of $749.00, or a little more than a dollar a watt. The design was notable for its brushed aluminum front panel and large dual VU meters, and was made possible by the new high-power transistors designed for the high voltages of auto electronic ignitions. That original amp was replaced by the 700B and the 700 II. All of those designs were made to have extra power to run loudly the relatively inefficient sealed-box speakers like the Acoustic Research AR3/AR3a. The next product was the Phase Linear 4000 Series Auto-correlation Pre-Amplifier introduced in 1973 and manufactured through 1978. It retailed for $700.00 at the end of its life. It was a design collaboration by Bob Carver and Bill Skinner. The second amplifier released was the Phase Linear 400 with 200 watts per channel. It shared the same distinctive brushed aluminum, dual VU meters front panel style as the 700. It retailed for just under $500[1].

The company was known for the most powerful audio amplifiers of the era led by the Phase Linear D-500 introduced in 1978. It was a stereo power amplifier delivering 505 watts of clean (typically < 0.1% total harmonic distortion over 20 Hz–20 kHz) RMS power per channel. It had a retail price of $1395.

The company would later be bought by Pioneer Electronics and Bob Carver would go on to found Carver Corporation in 1979. Pioneer added a high end cassette-tape deck designed in house and CD players designed by Kyocera to the Phase Linear line. But by that time the company was in decline due to the increasing cost of research and development, and the departure of founder Carver. In the 1980s Phase Linear was sold by Pioneer to Recoton and is currently only producing car audio equipment. Bob Carver later switched from Carver to Sunfire taking the design and the price-tags with him.

There continues to be a loyal following of some of the older products. Many electronic parts are still available for repairs. Mechanical parts such as switches, meters and hardware are scarce.

The next show that Nostalgia is playing.


I have been working on rounding out the sound with some "new" equipment that is actually kinda old. An amp that was made the year i was born, 1975, called a Phase Linear 700b. Using it to drive one 2x15 400w, and a 4x12 600w cabinets. This show should be the first time out with this set up. I will post pictures of the "
new" set up from the show. It's kinda insane and loud as all hell bastard!