Who has any experience with GTA gear?

[soundofvoid]

Just checking if anyone has ever owned a GTA unit (amp or preamp or intergraded)
This company made a big bang in the 90's as "the other way" to tube sound.
The company went under at the beginning of the new millenium but not before
the produced some memorable (and some obscure) designs.
The sound was much much better that the prices suggested but sometimes quality suffered!
Like having an Alfa Romeo that handles like a dream (when it works)!
Most of the problems were mainly parts quality issues.Nothing a little tinkering can't fix!

[kach22i]

Just checking if anyone has ever owned a GTA unit (amp or preamp or intergraded)

Yes, I own one of their wonderful 100 watt amps. The 40 watt and 9 watt amps were more problematic from what I understand, the 40 being very popular and the most buggy.

My SE-100 originally sold for only $3,000 but I've been told the price is misleading and that it is/was worth much more than that based on performance.

I've heard different stories about Solo Electronics (GTA), some say as a parts manufacturer they reserved the top 5 or 10 percent of parts which exceeded specfications and put them in their own stuff.

Others have argued that the designs are brilliant and the parts suck, and replace many of the parts down to the lowest resistors.

The Yahoo user group for Golden Tube Audio is a great resource, one of the posters specializes in modifying and refurbishing the old units.

I'm told the GTA preamp is excellent but they rarely come up for sale as they are life long keepers. I've only seen two for sale on Audiogon in ten years, but I don't check all that often.

I have to get Ioannis in Greece to start posting, he is the real expert on them. EDIT: Oops, that's him above me using an Alias.

My System Link:
http://www.martinloganowners.com/for...read.php?t=531

[Ki Choi]

I have had their remote control ~50W EL34 int. amp for a long time - got rid of it - missed it - and I bought another one last year and would be keeping it as my office system. Not accurate but very pleasant sound.

[soundofvoid]

Same as my SEP-3 preamp.
I upgraded to it from a SEP-2 using the trade in program of the local dealer.
What a wonderful machine!
A fully enclosed modern chassis,superb layout with 4X6922s in the main circuit and another 2X6922 in the completely separate phono board (for another 500$),
fully remote (from solid billet!) controlled,external PS with tube rectification and three separate transformer for various sections.
I haven't heard women's vocals to sound like that again ... ever!
Then after two years of impeccable service ... i got the upgrade bug and traded it for a Sonic Frontiers Line-2SE.
I felt sorry as hell for having to give it away and bought another one five years later...
And this time i was lucky to find one with the excellent phono board...
Imagine my surprise when i found that you could even tweak the cartridge loading from the remote!
A great machine that was produced in very small numbers (about 500?) and that very rarely comes up in the used market.

[flez007]

I had some friends who experienced reliability issues back then....

[soundofvoid]

Actually there were versions of all their models.
Some of them kept the same name and had a suffix added (like SE -special edition) when the change was substantial like better output transformers.
This applied to preamps and amps as well.
Sometimes it was just a better incarnation of the original circuit and was labelled inside as version 1/2/3...as in the common SE-40 amp.
The problems were easily dealed with upgrades to some parts that were underspecced...like diodes and resistors...
At the end of the production when the company was struggling to stay afloat the quality of parts suffered even more...
Anyway...it's nothing very demanding if you are a little experienced with tube gear...