"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...
In article , Eiron
wrote:
On 03/05/2016 18:24, Iain Churches wrote:
"Jim Lesurf" wrote in message
...

BTW last week someone bought an Armstrong 730/732 combination on
fleabay for 1,136 quid! I'm hoping they will contact me. But I
can't
give them their money back. 8-]

A friend of mine bought an Armstrong valve amp for UKP 1 (plus
post
and packing) . It has a bright red painted chassis which the
previous
owner assures him is orginal. Inside, is the most awful point-to
point wiring rat's nest (also original)

Back in the "golden days" The Leak TL12 (a mono amp designed in
1947)
was highly regarded. The layout/build quality is impressive:
https://www.google.com/search?q=leak...Sz8uuQygsIM%3A

The amp produced 12W into 8 Ohms, with THD 0.1% A pair of these
made
(and still do make) the nucleus of a very pleasing audio system.

This may explain why Harold Leak rode to the factory in a Rolls
and
Ted Rule used a bicycle:-)

Didn't anyone tell you? We don't do bitchiness here any more.

It does seem a rather odd outburst coming out of nowhere onto this
thread.

But it is an interesting example of someone judging something purely
on
appearances. :-)

TBH I'm not sure Ted rode a bicycle. I'll ask him. Iain might find
it
useful to be aware that he is still alive in case he wants to futher
patronise him or criticise his work. But he'll probably laugh at
what Iain
wrote. I doubt he designed hifi to get himself a Rolls Royce, and it
seems
odd to compare a design engineer with the owner of a company.

As for the Rolls, well Leak was always very good at publicity and
self-promotion. But some may recall the story of how his (sic) first
transistor amp design was actually 'developled'.

The Leak amplifiers were good, but I don't think I'd have wanted to
work
for or with him. Whereas I did enjoy working with Ted.

BTW Iain, if your friend wants to sell the amp, I'm sure he can get
a
higher price for it somewhere and make a profit. He may not be able
to buy
his own Rolls from it, though.


I bought a Leak Stereo 70 - which someone had painted white! I fitted
new smoothing caps and rewired the ceramic pickup sockets as an output
from the volume control so that I could feed the dual-mono power
MOSFET power amp that I had built. I think of all the various pre-amps
I used with that power amp the Leak was probably the best. It
certainly proved itself with depth and clarity of bass when driving
the home-built (WW/Bailey) TL speakers that I was using at the time!


--
Woody

harrogate3 at ntlworld dot com