[quote author="CJ"]
straighten me out. what does not sound good?
phase? distortion? headroom? soundstage? bottom? top? in between? all of the above?[/quote]
I would say all of the above but mainly soundstage, my main thing with it is that it sounds like a small transformer. There is absolutely nothing "wrong" sounding with that transformer by any stretch of the imagination but it has an intense character to it. I find it to definitely be bandwith limited, its just a small sounding transformer, but it has a cool midrange quality to it. I built a rev D and screwed around alot with input transformers, if you put a beefier transformer on the input, the output of the box gets several times larger, allowing more low end content into the circuit causes to my ear (no idea what the scope would say) more distortion which for me is a good thing as I use an 1176 as a distortion box more than anything else in the first place. I dont know the history of the design, but it isnt hard to imagine that the ouncer was selected not for its physical size or price (there's plenty of room to mount any transformer in there you'd want), but to limit the low end so the circuit would have a little cleaner sound to it. I imagine that less distortion was probably a priority more than more distortion in a box that already had off the chart distortion compared to some of its peers of the time. I always want my stuff to sound BIG, the circuit can definitely handle BIG but the biggest the big gets is intensely influenced by what the input transformer is allowing to pass into the circuit. Thats the best I can figure after plugging in lots of input transformers and comparing recordings. The ouncer has a very "light" quality to it, its forward sounding but I think that forward quality comes out from the lack of real tight bottom.
using an A20 over an 012 is a huge difference, a20's were among the ones I tried. Plug it in and you'll see. The 012 is a fine enough way to go, especially if you dont have an 1176 with one but if you are building a few you might consider listening to some other stuff before going nuts searching out piles of 012's, I think given the choice in todays climate more folks would go with a beefier sounding input transformer, the circuit can definitely handle getting whacked with a little more authority than an ouncer can deliver.
dave