I have been a tube guy with 'touch of tubes' solid state amps and preamp for 20 years. Possibly taken that as far as i can. Loved my time with it. Those paying attention know i have flirted with tube amps, and even gave serious thought to horns. Very serious thought. A few weeks ago i completed an amplifier compare and had not given thought to any further changes. The only issue on my mind was possibly selling my home and downsizing, which likely would drive me to somehow change speakers....the MM7's being too big for many rooms.
Gary Leeds, the Trafomatic importer, who i've known for 20+ years and been to my room a few times, called me and wondered if i wanted to try his new Trafomatic Elysian GM70 amps he had coming. they would arrive in a few weeks and he could have them routed to me. i told him i don't think so as i was not in the mood to do another compare, but he said he did not expect me to buy them, just wanted me to hear them. So i told him i would think it over, it's a lot of messing around, and would call him back. thinking about it i realized that Trafomatic was the brand with the big Elysium's i had lusted after for years. an SET with balls that could likely work not only on my MM7's, but also on horns. i had read everything about them, read Kedar's comments a few times, and my friend Mik in the UK owned them and loved them. but none existed in the Western Hemisphere. so i went back and did some more research and then called Gary back. told him if i was going to do anything, it would be with the big Elysium's. we talked about me trading in the darTZeel's. Gary offered to investigate that direction, which he did, and that direction did not work out after some efforts. in the meantime i did look much deeper about the amps, talked to Kedar about horns and SET's, talked to Mik about his Elysium's and thought it over.
why was i enamored with the
Trafomatic Elysium's? blame it on my time with the Lamm ML3's SET's in my room. that was the sound that grabbed me, i loved SET bass. and they were cohesive on the MM7's and very natural. just that 32 tube watts could not quite get over the hump in my room on my speakers. but the Elysium's have more drive and could do it. and everything i had read and heard was that it had that magical quality. and once triggered my sense was i was at that fork in the road, ready to go to a new chapter of my system direction. i would give up some precision on larger music, and trade that for more speed inside the notes, more sexiness, a more special sound. more distortion when i pushed it, but more immersive on most of the music. my darts almost never pull more than 2 or 3 watts on my MM7's, so Class A 20 watts and A1 20-70 watts......should be good. ideally i could hear them first in my system, but no way to do that. had to close my eyes and commit to get them.
i had not been familiar with the Trafomatic Tara 30A preamp, based on spring suspended
Emission Labs 30A tubes. the more i investigated it i think it's ideal for the Elysium. read what was out there and Mik has it and loves it. he recommended the high gain tubes for it. it's a beautiful piece, with a two box chassis.
as far as tubes, i will be buying a second complete set of tubes from Sasa, and then buying a third pair of the big EIMAC 250TL's. so i am covered long term as those are scarce. there are units with the same EIMAC tubes now for 7 years and there have been no failures with that tube. the big tubes have a 10,000 hour life, but i listen a lot.
once i felt like this was something i wanted to do, i did step back and consider alternatives. but not that many tube SET's that can handle my speakers. the Wavac 833 variants is one, the Alieno 250 LTD another. for various reasons those did not offer enough reasons to change, but if those were my first choice, maybe not enough reasons not to change from those either. i'm sure all three are good choices for my case.
i decided to proceed and order the Elysium and Tara 30A. delivery should be late March into April. Gary is loaning me a set of Westminster's until they arrive. my dart 468's are sold. i still need to sell my two phono stage dart NHB-18NS preamp, and my 7.5 meter set of Evolution Acoustics 'zeel' BNC's. i did add a grounding post to each Elysium back panel for my Tripoint grounding boxes since the chassis are tankwood (panzerholtz). the Elysium dimensions fit exactly on my TS-140 Tana/Herzan active devices. the main chassis of the Tara 30A will go on my top rack shelf on my smaller Tana/Herzan platform next to my Esoteric T1.
the provisional colors for placing the order are 'Royal Blue' for the Elysium's and 'Gloss White" for the Tara 30A. i have a few weeks to reconsider those color choices. part of me likes the conservative soft black matt color choice for both. need time to figure it out.
with these new amps, how long will i have my Evolution Acoustics MM7 speakers? horns? if so which one? how about
Zellaton?
Elysium - Mono Power Amplifier After 20+ years of exploring the exotic and ultra high end audio music reproduction we’re proudly presenting our cost no object, flagship state of the art mono-block power amplifiers. Trafomatic Audio was always pursuing the very different path of the musical...
www.trafomaticaudio.com
Tara 30A - Preamplifier Redefining the concept pre-amplifier, that was the goal set for Trafomatic Audio. Since the Elysium State of the Art tube power-amplifiers were launched in 2016 the search started for a matching quality tube pre-amplifier with some additional features. For instance...
www.trafomaticaudio.com
View attachment 163422
View attachment 163424
