whats up w/ germainia mania

The GERMANIUM Mic Pre is the first in a new series designs by Chandler Limited designer Wade Goeke. The series implements classic germanium transistors in all class A, transformer balanced, circuits.
These historically smooth sounding transistors were the basis of the earliest transistor designs by Neve (1053, 1055, 1057), EMI ( TG12345 MKI), Telefunken, and Fairchild. Those familiar with these units can attest to the special sound of the germanium transistor. The GERMANIUM series runs on +40 volt power, high current, and has a huge +34 output before clipping.

Is this a sham

Its a fad. Marketing. Blah blah..

I wonder if its as poorly designed and built as the other Chandler stuff Ive seen...

Whats up with the ugly LED meter anyway...isnt it supposed to be 'vintage'?


M

calling wade a "designer" is like calling a shoelace a spaceship.

dave

I know this post has been and gone but ........

Many years ago, as a teenager, I was losing faith. Valves were being replaced by transistors. I felt the sound was a retrograde step. Next thing you know, I was in a tech's service room. He was excited. "Listen to these silicon transistors..... they're replacing the germanium pieces of crap...... those germanium ones really piss me off, they're junk."

I listened. "They don't sound as good ...... they sound thin and sterile," I said. He had a listen, but couldn't hear any difference. He knew his tech stuff, but his ear was untrained.

To make matters worse, around the same time I auditioned quite a few guitar amps, and decided that ones built with carbon comp resistors sounded best. A few years back, after building a few amps (and paying through the nose for A/B's) I felt that other than a carbon comp on the first plate, metal film were the best.

So go figure...... I'm not sure if it's just that sound styles have changed or age has destroyed some of my hearing..... or I'm not as fussy anymore.

So I'm unsure......

Germanium transistors are miserable, leaky, drifty things.

[quote author="NewYorkDave"]Germanium transistors are miserable, leaky, drifty things.[/quote]

Dats why pipl lykez dem :wink: .

The germanium RCA BA-31A / 71A and the GE 4BA25B1 are both very good original american preamps that meet the Chandler description, and they sell in the low hundred$ as raw modules. I've never had to replace a bad transistor in any that I've seen, and I've seen a bunch. I'm pretty sure it depends on the specific germanium part # as to whether it's miserable and leaky.

The Chandler buzz is what they call.....MARKETING!

[quote author="NewYorkDave"]Germanium transistors are miserable, leaky, drifty things.[/quote]

I go for girls with similar attributes...


Heard a story once from Ex Abbey Road Managing Director Ken Townsend about how the valve amps in the REDD desks were replaced with transistor amps at one point around the early 1960's. These things were the same physical size and plugged right into the same slots in the racks. Anyway the verdict was that they sounded terrible so they yanked them all out pronto. I'm only 90%+ sure of the amp type but believe it was a REDD.49
I have the schem and it doesn't actually look too bad from a design standpoint - Xformer coupled, Push-Pull throughout and uses AC107's and some larger output devices which I now forget.

Yeah, but watch the feeding frenzy if those things ever hit eBay--assuming, of course, that EMI didn't destroy them years ago.

[quote author="NewYorkDave"]Yeah, but watch the feeding frenzy if those things ever hit eBay--assuming, of course, that EMI didn't destroy them years ago.[/quote]

Ain't that the truth.
I do know of a few of them still in existence and even though A.R.S. thought little of them compared to a valve amp, the amps were still produced at Hayes for use at other recording facilities.

The small REDD.43 desk used REDD.47 amps but was replaced by a REDD.43X which used REDD.49's. Also, the block diagram I have for a REDD.59 desk indicates replacing REDD.47 amps with REDD.49's and also assigns a 'TG' part number to them. These are possibly the pre-cursor to the TG-12345 MK1 desk amps, could be the same thing for all I care.

Maybe we should buy up all the AC107's we can find before the mad rush?