Zenith 5L29 Single Ended Tube Amp

 

Winter is coming and I finally got around to doing a bit of work on this Zenith 5L29 single ended pentode tube amp. I won this on Ebay about a year ago and it sat in storage. I finally have the time and space to work on tube amps again. 

This little guy is probably maxed out around 5-6 watts per channel. This unit comes with bass, treble, bass boost and volume. It runs two EL84, 12AX7 and a 6FQ7 with 5Y3 rectifier.

So far I just added the speaker terminals along with new RCA input jacks and CL90 inrush current limiter to bring the voltage down a bit from the wall socket. No cap work has been done on it yet.

This is a great little single ended unit and sounds great in my office with a not very efficient pair of Monitor Audio MA-9 speakers.

These are worthy little amp if you can pick one up, super easy to get up and running as a stand alone amp.

November 3, A little update, this little amp sounds fantastic and has really grown on me. I do not use the Bass Boost switch as it takes away the detail of this amp, I may just rewire this circuit out of the amp period.

Loving this amp, what more can I say.....

Magnavox 9302-00 EL84 tube amplifier

Another win on Ebay is this top of the line Magnavox 9302-00 push/pull EL84 tube amplifier. This unit will run around 15WPC when completed. These were units pulled from console stereo units from the mid 60's. This unit will get all the capacitors and resistors replaced along with a whole new tube set.

There is lots of support for this amplifier over on AudioKarma discussion boards with David Gillespie leading the forum.

This is my third vintage console push/pull EL84 amplifier with the first being the Electrohome Lorainne 40.

And this RCA RS-177J push/pull EL84 tube amp. 

Although this is a speaker blog, I have enjoyed working and learning about tube amplifiers. Tubes are my preferred way to enjoy the music and these older tube amps are easy to work on since they are point to point wiring and really basic in their layout. Schematics are easy to find as are the parts.

University RRL-12 Speakers

A friend of the blog arrived this week with a pair of immaculately refurbished pair of University RRL-12 speakers. The RRL-12 speakers feature 12" woofer with Alnico magnets along with a 5 inch midrange with Alnico magnets and a wonderful dome tweeter.

This pair of University RRL-12 were lovingly and painstakingly redone with mint cabinets and crossover that have high quality Erse and Solen capacitors along with audiophile grade resistors.

With a little tweaking with the brilliance control on the back along with a little added bass and treble powered through a push/pull Electrohome Kalmar 120 tube amp and these speakers sound absolutely fantastic.

Once the equalization was figured out the sound was very open and transparent with incredible detail and depth, by depth I mean the 3 dimensional image of where the instruments and vocals have their place in the room. It is as if you are in the same room as the musicians, the clarity can only be realized with a tube amp.

This surviving pair of University speakers are a real gem to grace this audiophile blogger.