Triad HS-56

Thank's to Jon and evilbay, I just recieved another member from the "Transformer Hall of Fame" last Friday.

The Triad HS-56.
600:600 input for Pultec and other classic gear. Lot's of cool music has gone thru this model.
Anyway, you know what's next! :grin:

:shock:

CJ, all this iron ur choppin up and deciphering - what's the end result apart knowing the ins n outs? Are you planning on making clone's of em or something?

Best :thumb:

CJ you may be going to far! :wink:

Alright maybe not. Hack it!

I still have all the guts to the hack jobs I have been doing. I guess I should start putting some of this stuff back together and see how much smoke comes out. There are only a handful of transformers that I am really interested in, and most of them have been taken apart.

Magnet wire and lams, thats all I need to start DIY'ing this stuff. Still got the mu cans left over, although some are sawed in half! :razz:

It will be nice to say: " I need an output xfmr for another LA2. I guess I'll just wind a S-217-D and see how that sounds."

:thumb:

WOW! :thumb: tease it apart!

Oh, everyone quit whinin'. It's not like CJ is hackin' up perfectly good trannies, they must have broken windings or some such. :twisted: Right CJ? :shock: RIGHT?!?! :shock:

Besides, there's a lot of trannies out there. Also, one less trannie will only help increase the value of those that remain! :razz:

Sometimes things need to be sacrificed in the name of science! :razz:

Yeah, in the name of science for gosh sakes.

Fazeka, I could use a good attorney right now. But he's gotta be part Samoan so he can really work out on people in court.
Can ya help me? :grin:

"I could use a good attorney right now. But he's gotta be part Samoan so he can really work out on people in court. "

LOL. Yes, I think you're going to need a lot of legal advice before this is over...

Go CJ!!!!!!!! For the betterment of society and all that .... :razz:

Let the slaughter begin!

JH.

:shock:

OK, did some tests, this is by far the most balanced x-former I have ever tested. I set the Gen Rad bridge to a null at max sensitivity, so if you breathe on it from ten feet, the needle jumps around like a frog in a dynamite pond. Then I hook it up to all four windings and the needle does not move one micron. EXACTLY the same inductance for each coil. Down to the third decimal place on the Sencore and B-K tester also. I do not know how they did this, as all the resistances are different.

I am guessing winding structure is sec-pri-pri-sec from the DCR readings, which means E-I lams, single coil. Fun to speculate, then hack.

1 to 2 henries per winding, depending on who you ask.

DCR is 24.4, 28, 30.4 and 33.8

Drops 1/2 db at 1 hz!!!

Flat till 100K! But this is normal for a 1:1 x-former.

Self res is 6 volts with one volt input is at at 235 kcps.
A slight bump before the deep six, but nothing to write home about.

Where's the torch! :razz:

You could have been a brain surgeon......'cept for the prior practice...and "where's my torch?" :green:

Actually doing listening tests brfore the torch.

Sowter vs Triad vs UTC GR series 500:500.

Very, very close. Sowter ever so slightly more high end. UTC, a tad bit better balance of frequencies depending on the track you play thru it.

Triad, very good also.

Tonite, Lundahl vs UTC matching-LS Series.

OK, I did some more A/B testing before I am commiting the HS-56 to the saw.

This is a 600:600 test done on a Pultec EQP-1A with CD music input for test signal.

Rod Stewart's "Do You Think I'm Sexy" was the track. (I know, laugh it up, but he's got a really good voice for testing, lots of weird subtle mid range, and the drums have a lot of crispy high end, anfd there's a pretty heavy bottom end also)

This time I tried a couple of UTC big boys, an LS-140 and LS-68. Brand new out of the box. One is a mic splitter, the other is a straight 600 in and 600 Hybrid (whatever that means) out with only one tap for 150 ohms. Both had about 50 ohms dcr, front and back.

I also tested a Lundahl 600:600. Unfortunatly the model number is on the bottom, tie wrapped to the chassis.

They were compared with my standard which is the Sowter 3603 I believe.
The Sowter has been winning the contest so far, even if ever so slightly.

The UTC mic splitter was the first one eliminated from the competition, due to a slightlynrolled off high end, probably due to the extra capacitance

The remaining UTC barely edged out the Sowter, due to a miniscule high end advantage, slightly beefier bottom, but it was very very close.

Next, the Lundahl vs the UTC and Sowter. The UTC and Sowter had better high end than the Lundahl. The UTC andSowter had a slightly better bottom end than the Lundahl.

I know, your saying "Hey, Lundahl's are supposed to kick ass! What's up?"

Well, the Lundahl did have one advantage over the UTC and Sowter, and that is something a bit hard to explain in words. It just had a different overall sound. The frequencies mixed and interacted with each other differently. Call it transparent, or whatever you want. Just a different sound stage you might say. Another weird thing about the Lundahl, when I eq the high end down as far as I could to concentrate on the bass frequencies, you could hear more high end still bleeding thru the Lundahl, where as in the Sowter and UTC, the high end was more effectively blocked by the equalizer. Strange.

So overall, the UTC and Sowter had a little better frequency response both top and bottom, but the Lundahl might have been more "musical" for lack of a better term. This subtle difference would require many more hours of listening, and many differnt kinds of music to come up with a definitive statement.
I am finding that different x-formers sound better for certain tracks than others. In other words, it's a balancing act, and while you might do an A/B test and say that brand X is better, change the track and guess what. The roles are reversed.

cj

cj-

did you hack the hs56 yet? Ive always wondered how those things behaved as a step-up vs. 1:1.

dave

It's in the pre-op room, recieveing a local anesthetic. :razz:

if you get a chance to listen before you cut it open, Id love to see if the bottom end sounds similar at 1:1 and stepped up. I should just go get one...

dave

You could try for these:

x

A stay of execution has just come in for the HS-56!
I guess I can do your tests Dave!

I just recievd this from my 73 year old x-former guru. There is added info just for the heck of it:

Hello Chris:
Never fear, the Daven's are still waiting for you @ a hundred bucks apiece plus shipping for about tem bucks.
Don't tear apart a good HS-56 as I will send you the original winding data that I got from TRIAD before the went back to California and shut me out. Just give me your address and I will send you a copy of the 56. Why ruin a good coil! I also have the winding data for the MA-230 OPT'S as I bought a last pair from Audio Classics many years ago so I did unwind one of them for knowledge. Incidentally it was the only OPT wound out of house.
unwound one of the LS-10-X's several years ago so the winding data should be in my Bug UTC files. I will see if I can find it. That's another twin-coil twin-wind affair where two wires are wound at the same time, but not bifilarly. I haven't tried doing this type of winding yet as it requires a special guide to keep things from going haywire while winding and UTC had this down to a science.
I had CORTRAN make me 20 12-L type C-cores out of regular 4- mil GOSS, but I had to give then $185.00 for a setup charge so this added to the price of each C-core. If you are interested in some of these, I would be glad to sell you some at my cost.
I have not called Mike since December 04 so I really don't know what's going on with him, but I know he likes to race something, like roller skates, wheelbarrows or something like that.
I am currently refurbishing five McIntosh MI-200 power amplifiers and just got through rewinding an M-208 OPT which was a real bitch as McIntosh put the wrong coil in the can and it was soaking wet and the insulating paper was mush and naturally it was well shorted out. I obtained the correct winding data and did a fantastic rewind with my now twelve year old invention of winding the MI-200 "s as the first one got written up in Kittelson's magazine, Vacuum Tube Valley. It will probably NEVER destroy itself as it can stand over 2000 volts between windings.
Actually I am doing pretty well, but not crying all the way to the bank. Money comes in even when I don't work, but I don't want to brush the cobwebs away from my rocking chair just yet.

Doc

Click to expand...