Western Electric 91 E just arrived ...

[Bones13]

Single ended triode… would require extra conversion of a balanced input to single ended for feeding into the single ended based amp circuit.

They also offer $125,000+ monoblocks with 8x 300b tubes per side.

This integrated amp is aimed at people wanting a single box solution, with modern convenience items (remote, Bluetooth, etc) it even has a phono section, with configuration for loading. It has a USB and Ethernet ports on the back, but for service only. Bluetooth streaming only. So I suppose most would hook up a DAC and/or disk player. Enough connections for stereo input from TV, and a turntable.

I was intrigued by 2 things. First was the transformer change out for speaker matching. Secondly, I’m interested in how hard they are running the tubes to get twice the power out, compared to normal 300b amps.

 

[atmasphere]

Single ended triode… would require extra conversion of a balanced input to single ended for feeding into the single ended based amp circuit.



I was intrigued by 2 things. First was the transformer change out for speaker matching. Secondly, I’m interested in how hard they are running the tubes to get twice the power out, compared to normal 300b amps.

The first statement is false: all that is needed is a differential input. That way you can receive a balanced input and use either output of the differential amplifier to drive the rest of the circuit; no 'conversion' needed.

Regarding the output transformer, when you have multiple taps there is a price paid for that which decreases the transformer's performance. So its a really good idea to have multiple transformers available. Since the Western Electric amps are parafeed, there's no high Voltage on them so changing them out should be very easy.