Florian
06-26-2012, 06:35 AM
Hello everyone,
i have not written in any forum in the last couple of years, besides as few one liners. This website seems to be more calmer now, maybe because i was gone :wink5: Age seems to be a good teacher, i even understand what RGA writes and can read it without busting a bubble, or two. Anyway i wanted to share my KRELL story with you guys.
As some of you may know, i am/was a hardcore Apogee Ribbon and Krell guy. For me, the two simply belonged together. One thing changed, the KRELL part. My first Krell AMP was a KSA150. It drove 1 ohm Apogee Scinitllas just fine but simply did not sound very good. I then got a KSA 100 MKII which was much better since it actually ran in Class A for more then the KSA150. Since that was not enough, i bought a KSA250 and thought this was just it.
But the sound was also cold, no micro dynamics, tone or instrument expansion. I sold it and got a pair of Sphinx Project 14 Hybrid amps (Tubes for the input and Mosfets at the Output) with no local or global feedback. This sounded very nice indeed! Problem was the DC offset, which is not compatible with actively run ribbons.
I found four Krell KRS200 mono block amplifiers, which are the largest mono blocks build by KRELL. I bought all four of them, but none of them actually worked. So i spend many thousands of € to fix them. Once i got them all, they looked like this.
968 Pounds of amplification :out:
http://gallery.audioreview.com/data/audio/500/medium/DSC08394.jpg
The sound was "nice", you get impressed by the sheer size of them and the power consumption (1460 Watts) per piece, at IDLE.
I heard them for some month and thought that it was fairly good. In the end, the Apogees are with other systems the highest resolution speakers you can buy. Then came a moment were i heard a friends Apogee System which consisted of the Apogee Scintilla driven by LAMM 1.1 amplifiers (again Hybrids, no feedback). The sound was much better then the Grand with the KRS 200 amplifiers. :yes nod:
About a week or so i settled for the following amplifiers. 1 CAT JL2 Stereo Amp (187 Pounds) with 22 tubes and two NAT SE2SE mono blocks with 4x211 tubes and pre tubes. It sounds amazing! And so i thought id share that with you and upload some pics.
http://gallery.audioreview.com/data/audio/500/medium/DSC08618.jpg
My progress in the last few years were the visual restoration of my speakers. That was close to 10k... so it took some time. The electronics of the speaker should be finally done in 5 weeks (got a new tech that was man enough to touch it) :yes nod:
I thought that Apogees always needed Krells, but at least for my Apogee (Fully Active) 5ohm ribbons with aprox. 90db efficiency the Krells were completely useless. The NAT has 60 Watts of Single Ended Output power and massive output transformers. They drive the Apogees to very very loud levels with zero problems. I would never have believed it.... would i not have taken the risk. You learn something new everyday :-)
http://gallery.audioreview.com/data/audio/500/medium/DSC08587.JPG
Analog playback was introduced and many other things. The system now consists of the following:
CAT SL1 Signature Preamp
Monarchy Audio NM24 Tube Dac
Monarchy Audio DIP Combo
Olive Audio 4 HD
Watec Analog Drive 3
Watec Analog Acrylic Arm
Watec Analog Magnetic String Arm
Ortofon MC Rondo Red
Shure V15vXMR
Magnan Cables
Element Cables
4 Krell Monoblocks which are built into the speaker (going to throw out one pair for another set of NAT SE1 SE's
Cheers
Flo
i have not written in any forum in the last couple of years, besides as few one liners. This website seems to be more calmer now, maybe because i was gone :wink5: Age seems to be a good teacher, i even understand what RGA writes and can read it without busting a bubble, or two. Anyway i wanted to share my KRELL story with you guys.
As some of you may know, i am/was a hardcore Apogee Ribbon and Krell guy. For me, the two simply belonged together. One thing changed, the KRELL part. My first Krell AMP was a KSA150. It drove 1 ohm Apogee Scinitllas just fine but simply did not sound very good. I then got a KSA 100 MKII which was much better since it actually ran in Class A for more then the KSA150. Since that was not enough, i bought a KSA250 and thought this was just it.
But the sound was also cold, no micro dynamics, tone or instrument expansion. I sold it and got a pair of Sphinx Project 14 Hybrid amps (Tubes for the input and Mosfets at the Output) with no local or global feedback. This sounded very nice indeed! Problem was the DC offset, which is not compatible with actively run ribbons.
I found four Krell KRS200 mono block amplifiers, which are the largest mono blocks build by KRELL. I bought all four of them, but none of them actually worked. So i spend many thousands of € to fix them. Once i got them all, they looked like this.
968 Pounds of amplification :out:
http://gallery.audioreview.com/data/audio/500/medium/DSC08394.jpg
The sound was "nice", you get impressed by the sheer size of them and the power consumption (1460 Watts) per piece, at IDLE.
I heard them for some month and thought that it was fairly good. In the end, the Apogees are with other systems the highest resolution speakers you can buy. Then came a moment were i heard a friends Apogee System which consisted of the Apogee Scintilla driven by LAMM 1.1 amplifiers (again Hybrids, no feedback). The sound was much better then the Grand with the KRS 200 amplifiers. :yes nod:
About a week or so i settled for the following amplifiers. 1 CAT JL2 Stereo Amp (187 Pounds) with 22 tubes and two NAT SE2SE mono blocks with 4x211 tubes and pre tubes. It sounds amazing! And so i thought id share that with you and upload some pics.
http://gallery.audioreview.com/data/audio/500/medium/DSC08618.jpg
My progress in the last few years were the visual restoration of my speakers. That was close to 10k... so it took some time. The electronics of the speaker should be finally done in 5 weeks (got a new tech that was man enough to touch it) :yes nod:
I thought that Apogees always needed Krells, but at least for my Apogee (Fully Active) 5ohm ribbons with aprox. 90db efficiency the Krells were completely useless. The NAT has 60 Watts of Single Ended Output power and massive output transformers. They drive the Apogees to very very loud levels with zero problems. I would never have believed it.... would i not have taken the risk. You learn something new everyday :-)
http://gallery.audioreview.com/data/audio/500/medium/DSC08587.JPG
Analog playback was introduced and many other things. The system now consists of the following:
CAT SL1 Signature Preamp
Monarchy Audio NM24 Tube Dac
Monarchy Audio DIP Combo
Olive Audio 4 HD
Watec Analog Drive 3
Watec Analog Acrylic Arm
Watec Analog Magnetic String Arm
Ortofon MC Rondo Red
Shure V15vXMR
Magnan Cables
Element Cables
4 Krell Monoblocks which are built into the speaker (going to throw out one pair for another set of NAT SE1 SE's
Cheers
Flo