Dennis Had Inspire Amps

[Bombadil]

I've got one of those EL84 amps too. Looks just like the one that Straitwire posted. Got it used, less than 1 year old, in mint condition for $525. Puts out 5 wpc max, maybe not that much.

[ismelllikepoop]

Yea when I was in a small apt those 5 watts were more than enough.

[straitwire]

Originally Posted by ismelllikepoop

Found the photo of my old one. I gotta ask was are the RCA jacks for the preamps lined up better? They were a little crooked on mine, which bugged the crap outbif me.

The preamp chassis's and the FireBottle chassis's are made for us by a metal fabricator now because we need them in quantities larger than I can produce by hand.
But I still cut the other types of chassis's that we use in small quantities.
Some of the early chassis's were cut before I developed a template process that produces a chassis that is as accurate as a metal fabricating shop.

[ismelllikepoop]

Cool. I gotta figure out how to disable eBay from sending her alerts. Neither of us have any idea why she gets popups for my account on her laptop. Another thing that always puzzled me was some postings for what appears to be identical items are different prices such as 1650 vs 1395.

Also, are three the type of amps that will last me for decades, meaning if Dennis decides to hang it up, a competent service tech could figure out the schematics and repair it? That's part of the reason for my Mc setup was the thought that someone will be able to service it for many years down the road.

[Analog Addict]

Greetings everyone. I've been MIA recently since I lost some of my mojo on a couple of projects that haven't made it to the finish line, including my 01A pre amp which is languishing over at the shop while I cool my heels at home. But, I did get a number of 2.5V filament transformers in and decided to upgrade my 45 PSE by splitting the output tubes from two tubes on a common cathode circuit to separate filament transformers and cathode circuits for each output tube.

The advantage is that it will hopefully allow me to get a longer lifetime out of my 45s, since when two tubes share a common cathode, it can lead to uneven tube wear if the tubes aren't matched. This way I can put any four 45 tubes I want into the amp and not have to worry about whether they're matched or not. The down side, finding space under the hood to add two more transformers and the cathode components. Luckily this was an oversized chassis to start with.

Before:

Untitled by Allan Shang, on Flickr

After:
Untitled by Allan Shang, on Flickr

Put in the rectifier and VR tubes and the voltages check out. Need to flip it right side up and see if it works like it should.

Just to make sure people understand, I am really a glorified technician. I can build an nice amp from a schematic and I do like to throw out unconventional ideas and see if they'll stick to the wall, or more accurately, see what Dennis thinks. I don't fool myself thinking I could ever match the knowledge, wisdom and experience that almost 60 years of building, designing and tinkering that Dennis brings to the table. I'm glad to call him my mentor and friend and am still trying to keep learning as much as possible whenever possible...

[straitwire]

Hey ismelllikepoop, I am 54 years old and I don't plan on going anywhere any time soon.
And our customer support goes without saying and is a part of being in the Inspire club.
But as I have said before you sometimes have to have patience with us because of the huge number of emails we receive and the fact that Inspire is just Dennis and myself.
So if your email goes unanswered I am truly very sorry about that, just keep trying and we will get to you as soon as possible.

The way our point to point hand wired amps are overbuilt from the duty cycle of the transformers we use to the quality and durability of the capacitors and resistors we use (they don't have to be made from unobtainium in Europe or Japan or elsewhere to be of high quality), I think that it is safe to say that they will be running for a long time.

But if having an amp serviced 10 to 15 to 20 years or more from now and having a large company's customer support, notoriety, return policies (if available) and the ability to talk to a salesman at a dealership or audition equipment (if that is their policy) as well as name recognition influences your buying decision then choosing a brand name product is probably the way to go, I mean that in all sincerity and I am not knocking a decision based on those parameters.
But keep in mind that these benefits are part of the sometimes substantial price increase that you pay compared to our products.
And also large manufacturers have to purchase and produce in huge quantities and sometimes that means that they have to choose parts based on lowering their overhead or to make assembling their units faster or easier.


Some of the amps we sell are built on the same chassis layout because that saves you money, and to change the chassis just because it is a different amp is in my opinion more of a marketing gimmick that just ends up costing the customer more money, and also different circuits do not necessarily require different chassis's unless you increase the number of tubes used in the circuit or change the footprint of the transformers, so some of our different amps use the same chassis, but the circuits, the power transformers, the output transformers, and output tubes are usually not the same.
We build different amps for different customer needs.
If you scroll down in the eBay listing, Dennis describes the amp that is listed to give you an idea of what you are buying.
If you have more questions about the listed amp contact Dennis.
Or if you want an amp that you saw listed but it sold before you could pull the trigger, contact Dennis and we will build that amp for you.

We offer directly heated Triode amps.
Indirectly heated Triode amps.
Triode strapped Pentode amps.
Pentode configured amps.
And most of these configurations are available in Parallel output as well as mono blocs.
And of course preamps as well.
Take your pick.

The amps that Dennis lists on eBay are what he is building at the moment but if that is not what you are interested in then talk to him and we can build any of our other offerings for you, but this takes longer if the chassis is different than the standard 8x10 that you see the most of because I have to cut the chassis, get it powder coated, and if necessary Dennis has to order transformers because we don't keep all these different transformers and chassis's on the shelf because keeping a large stock of transformers and chassis's increases the cost to the customer.
The difference in the pricing of the different units comes from the cost of the output transformers, the power transformers, the circuit parts, and the output tubes.

Now one other thing to consider when it comes to pricing is the fact that most brand name manufacturers have costs associated with their products that we do not.
For example, we do not have a large manufacturing facility to light, heat, cool, insure, and otherwise maintain.
We do not have lots of employees to pay, provide insurance for or provide benefits too.
We do not have a sales staff to pay or a dealer network, so you don't pay for sales commissions or dealer mark up.
These and many other costs are not passed onto you, if we had these costs then the price of these products would be substantially higher than they are.

Now about some of these brand name manufacturers, I will inject my personal opinion that is shaped by my experience with building and selling amplification equipment.
I will not name drop because in my opinion that is belittling and counter productive.
But many of our customers (too many to count) that have bought our products have been amazed at the sound quality of our products and have put aside or sold their much more expensive name brand equipment in favor of ours.

Sorry about going on and on here guys but I have given this a lot of thought over the last six years.

Answers generate further questions...straitwire...

[Bombadil]

Originally Posted by straitwire

The preamp chassis's and the FireBottle chassis's are made for us by a metal fabricator now because we need them in quantities larger than I can produce by hand.
But I still cut the other types of chassis's that we use in small quantities.
Some of the early chassis's were cut before I developed a template process that produces a chassis that is as accurate as a metal fabricating shop.

Did you make the chassis for those old EL84 Inspire amps?

Just fired mine back up. Haven't listened to it for a while.

I consider these to be the modern, perfected version of the old Magnavox 196 SE amp.

[Bombadil]

Originally Posted by ismelllikepoop

Yea when I was in a small apt those 5 watts were more than enough.

I've gone in the other direction. When I purchased the Inspire EL84 some years ago, I had a large listening room and they ran out of juice & clipped. Now my room is half that size and it is more up to the task.

I also tried to use it to drive a pair of bookshelf speakers, sensitivity 87dB, and that didn't work out so well either. Right now listening to it paired with 91dB tower speakers and it is usable.

[Analog Addict]

Originally Posted by Bombadil

Did you make the chassis for those old EL84 Inspire amps?

Just fired mine back up. Haven't listened to it for a while.

I consider these to be the modern, perfected version of the old Magnavox 196 SE amp.

Tony will give you a more detailed response, but as I recall, the whole Inspire brand came from Dennis being "Inspired" by exactly one of these old Maggie amps. I have an old Zenith Console pull that Dennis rebuilt as part of his early experimentation. It's out on loan, but I think it still is indicative of the Inspire sound...Anyway, I believe some of the real early ones were rebuilt Maggie chassis, but it didn't take long for custom made chassis to arrive...

[ismelllikepoop]

Wow thank you for the detailed response. Dennis emailed me back pretty quickly after my initial inquiry. Not to derail this thread but I liken it to my watches. I have my mainstream brands that I plan to give to my kids, and know those will be able to be serviced forever like my Mcintosh. Then you have your independent brands that are doing interesting fun things that the mainstream brands wouldn't touch, but servicing those down the road is not guaranteed nor is ease of resale if that matters. With luxury goods, watches, cars, audio equipment the thing that irked me was the salespeople (not all before you crucify me) made me feel like they were doing me a favor letting me buy from them.

Anyways still trudging through years of posts that I missed, as time goes by more of the same I guess. Hoping to rejoin the inspire clan again soon.

Is there a way to dm or email you straitwire so I don't clutter this thread more?