Thanks fellas for the education and links. Great info that leads to more confusion !
The few photos of the oldest Liverpool output transformers I've seen had the Gray ones, Stancor I believe.
From the links above its been confirmed Liverpools were 5k2? I this a Stancor A3800?
Heyboer did make transformers for Ken. Are there any know amps for references that are fitted with Heyboer??
Pacific's Ken Fisher files only show 6k6 transformers. Maybe they didn't find all the files or Ken used a different manufacture for the output transformer on Liverpools?
2tone wrote: ↑Wed Dec 13, 2017 6:52 pm
I had written in two places in my ongoing Ken discussion notes that the Liverpool was around 5 k, so was very confused when it is now 6.6k. I had old transformer Express and Liverpool with the same Stancor OT's...
Your confirming the Express and Liverpool had the same output transformers identified by model part number?
I cant say the 5k was a little louder. I had both old and new transformer Expresses and Liverpools. The old Express with grey Stancor was blusier than the later pacifics. Maybe a hair louder but it's hard to judge. The Liverpool with the old grey Stancor was blusier than later, more aggressive Pacifics also. The Liverpool was a little cleaner, but just as loud as later ones...The mids and upper mids were not as aggressive with the old grey Stancors. More even sounding..
If you go back and read the posts M Follwer links you will likely become more confused like I am!
2Tones posts are always reviling but secretive at the same time
I am really starting to think Ken chose transformers based on what sounded better for that application.. not just a 6k6 stancor for a 6k6 stancor.. Quite possibly the transformers he had made with different M6 or M27 metals ect.
After all we have 19 Pacific transformers documents on file.. all of whats very similar to one another. They of course don't tell us the details about construction.
No reason to be confused. We all have learned that there was never a 5k2 transformer used for a Liverpool. It was either the Old grey Stancor used for both Express and Liverpool and the newer Pacific which was a copy of the Stancor. Both 6k6. If there's is a difference in character between Stancor and Pacific being the second slightly gainier, with more mids and punchier that is another topic. I've been told by someone close to Ken that Pacific was more consistent than Stancor predicting the amp's outcome but also that the Stancor if he found a good one was smoother, sweeter and bluesier sounding.
Puzzling because Ken had told me a couple times (I wrote it in my notes in 2 different pages). All I know is my old Express and Liverpool,s had the same ouytput. Ken I believe was using off the shelf Stancors. I don't know if they were 5.2 or 6.6 because I never measured them.
Maybe Ken was referring to the newer Pacifics that had the 5k impedance. I don't know. Why would he tell me twice about the Liverpool being 5k?.. I never have figured this out. But my old Stancor grey tx amps had the same output, Liverpool and Express..I just assumed they were both 5+K
Are you thinking the links in M Fowlers are out dated?
This was before my time (I think) but lots of miss information was being passed around on purpose. Maybe the links are some of it?
redshark wrote: ↑Fri Dec 15, 2017 6:22 pm
No reason to be confused. We all have learned that there was never a 5k2 transformer used for a Liverpool. It was either the Old grey Stancor used for both Express and Liverpool and the newer Pacific which was a copy of the Stancor. Both 6k6. If there's is a difference in character between Stancor and Pacific being the second slightly gainier, with more mids and punchier that is another topic. I've been told by someone close to Ken that Pacific was more consistent than Stancor predicting the amp's outcome but also that the Stancor if he found a good one was smoother, sweeter and bluesier sounding.
2tone wrote: ↑Fri Dec 15, 2017 7:42 pm
Maybe Ken was referring to the newer Pacifics that had the 5k impedance. I don't know. Why would he tell me twice about the Liverpool being 5k?.. I never have figured this out. But my old Stancor grey tx amps had the same output, Liverpool and Express..I just assumed they were both 5+K
No. Both of them 6k6. Maybe Ken said that intentionally just to create the doubt but I'm sure 6k6 was the number for both Express and Liverpool.
I don't know if a couple of pools had that experimental value of 5k2 but it was only that, an experiment.
I'm sure both transformers were grey Stancor A-3801 with 6k6.
As I said, Maybe Ken said that for people not to figure out his amps or indeed he decided to experiment and use 5k2 in 1 or a couple of Liverpools just to experiment or maybe because the buyer wanted a gainier amp. Who knows.
M Fowler wrote: ↑Wed Dec 13, 2017 3:27 am
From my Moose notes: -- the HTS5200 is NOT the correct liverpool tranny. It is an M6 steel stancor style that was for an experiment that KF wanted to do with hi-fi materials. Maybe it was when he was choosing steel for a clean amp like the Rocket, or something else, but it's nothing like what ended up in liverpools. This was one of the red herrings in the early days here.
The "correct" liverpool tranny is going to be an original stancor, or a Pacific at 5200 or my 5200 ohm heyboer offering. I mentioned that I have separated the line to carry more pure versions earlier in this thread. I have boatloads of liverpool trannies in stock and on sale.
That is interesting in a few ways. It was the HTS-5200 that we used in the "Group Build Rocket" amps. We took a little bit of a beating over choosing to use that OT in a Rocket but we were almost done before the real tranny specs for the Rocket were revealed. Maybe the HiFi qualities of the HTS-5200 make it a good tranny for the Rocket circuit? I still use that first Rocket as the gold standard I compare other Rockets to and it sounds every bit as good as the one I built with a real vintage Dynaco 470 OT in it.
I talked with John Mark about Express Output trannies a fair bit and he said any stancor A-3801 was probably going to sound good but he felt that "the older the better" to his taste. He also told me that KF had tons of Stancors OT's that he went through and listened to each one then then characterized some as "Jazzy" and others as "Bluesy" and others as whatever... etc. When I had Mercury Mag clone the grey A-3801 that I had they said it was a sloppy made tranny and that it would be very difficult to make exact duplicates in bulk because of the build technique. My experience with the Pacific's is that each one seems to sound exactly the same.
The one Wreck that I know used a Heyboer transformer for certain was one of the earlier Rocket builds and it was the Power Tranny not the Output that was used. The output was a Dynaco but he didn't say whether it had been modified or not. I sold the owner a modern tranny set so he could clone the amp and he mentioned that the original Heyboer had a slightly lower voltage on the B+ than the Pacific. I'm not privy to any other info regarding a Heyboer in an original Wreck.
Last edited by RJ Guitars on Sun Dec 17, 2017 2:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
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