Valve Amplifiers

We like valve amplifiers, and have considerable experience of the different types that are, and have been, available.

Designs of valve amplifiers fall into three basic principles: single-ended, push-pull and output transformerless (OTL). Push-pull designs are the most common as they can be designed easily to give as much power as required dependent on the number of push-pull pairs of valves utilised. Because of this, this design works well with most real world loudspeakers on the market. Single-ended designs inevitably mean low power output, but can produce superb results with appropriately sensitive speakers, but good examples of these are hard to find. OTL designs can combine the transparency of single-ended with the dynamics of push-pull, but there are only a few designs based on this principle.

There are many valve amplifiers on the market but not many that sound truly excellent. Those that do tend to be very expensive, possibly too highly price for what they offer. We continue to evaluate brands as they appear and will only select from those that satisfy our criteria on sound, value and reliability.



At present we are considering two OTL designs classic designs with completely modern interpretations. One brand from Germany called Eternal Arts with amplifiers delivering extremely wide bandwidth, powerful, but with a low noise floor. The other is from Italy called Alieno LTD 250: a Class A. OTL and OCL design generating 250 wpc from just two 300B valves. Seems unbelievable on paper but, from hearing a pre-production sample in a very high quality system, the sound was truly excellent substantiating the claims.