Metropoulos Forum

Every Heyboer trans I've tried has absolutely rocked!
They make them the way the vintage ones were made, MM uses modern methods and then compensates to achieve the desired tone.

****** is a guy by the name of Chris ******. He makes his own OPT & PT for Marshalls. I just think and most will agree that Heyboer does not make good transformers compared to ****** or Mercury Magnetics.

MARCO wrote:****** is a guy by the name of Chris ******. He makes his own OPT & PT for Marshalls. I just think and most will agree that Heyboer does not make good transformers compared to ****** or Mercury Magnetics.

I think that's a grossly misinformed assumption. Heyboer will make to the specs you provide; so while maybe their standard stock offerings don't trip your trigger, guys like George and Brian Wallace provide their specs and that's what gets built, to their satisfaction.
You have heard of Marstran, right? Built to Brian's specs by Heyboer, based on Brian's teardowns of original units? Utterly killer trannies that sound wonderfully musical? No? Maybe you need to do more research first then........
If you think George or Brian would compromise their amps' tone with sub-standard trannies you clearly don't know our host and some of our other contributors very well.

I've used MM, Heyboer, & Hammond trannies. I have taken the advice of Paul & Sergio and used one of their OT's for my Plexi Crunch amp. It's awesome sounding.

I am also using a custom designed single ended Class A OT for my Capt Crunch and Major Crunch amps from Heyboer, and it sounds incredible.

Alot of this has been trial and error, no doubt. One of the things I'm going to try next is giving MM my Heyboer Major Crunch OT and see if they can clone it...they're alot closer, but they also cost 30% more for the OT than Heyboer does. If it sounds better, great!

Keep in mind, though, that tone is subjective. Labeling a Heyboer as PUKE and MM as GOLD would be too sweeping a statement. I've got MM trannies that didn't rock my world AT ALL, and at a $200 per "spec OT" price, that kind can get expensive. A spec OT is one you have built to your specs, by the way.

OTOH, Heyboer's "spec" OT price is 1/3 of Mercury's. So you can see why, in an effort to save money, people would go with Heyboer.

MARCO wrote:.........I just think and most will agree that Heyboer does not make good transformers...........

Sorry... Not to sound brash but I feel that I am more inline with Flames' observation.....

Flames1950 wrote:.......... No? Maybe you need to do more research first then........
If you think George or Brian would compromise their amps' tone with sub-standard trannies you clearly don't know our host and some of our other contributors very well.

Jimmie K.

Thread Topic check....Heyboer vs MM, right ?


To my understanding MM only uses US mined, processed, anealed steel.
This does have an effect and gives MM T's their charactoristics.


Jimmie K.

MARCO wrote:****** is a guy by the name of Chris ******. He makes his own OPT & PT for Marshalls. I just think and most will agree that Heyboer does not make good transformers compared to ****** or Mercury Magnetics.

Ive heard Cerrems trannys are killer but I have used MM, OEI, Metro, SoZo and Marstran. The only tranny I did not like in that list was an MM and, funny, thats the only non heyboer. I thought MM was the best just by the price and hype but lucky for me I know better now. There's a lot of decent tranys out there these days and the only thing wrong with any of them is assuming one should be better for any given person. Now Ive heard plenty of great thing about Cerrems trannys but on the other hand, theres members here whove had them and sold them.

There might be this idea out there that MMs are more expensive because they are made so much better. Even before I heard of Metro or Marstran there was a lot of talk that MMs are overpriced and overhyped and arent that great. I think the truth is niether. They are more expensive because of their choice of materials. Other manufacturers may not be able to copy that but they may not want to either. But the main thing here is that, it doesnt mean they sound 'better'. Stock OTs suck because the only thought put into them is how cheap can we make them without destroying the amps tone.

I think rockstar said it. If it sounds good it is good. My question with the transformers is ageing. After the years how will a MM sound compaired to Hybour vs the original.

If its a question of quality I think we've heard many times that one of the hardest parts of cloning old tranys is that these days its hard to find steel thats not way better then it used to be. Something that may help the newer tranys sound the same longer possibly? But makes it harder to sound original.I guess getting it as flawed as it was in years past means manufacturing in an archaic way thats expensive, hard to do and possibly illegal.

Cheech wrote:I think rockstar said it. If it sounds good it is good.

No! That was Duke Ellington!

But he neither meant transformators, nor tubes - he simply meant your playing

Larry

Indeed Brian Wallace is the man. I can't be sure what he measures on originals and then has Heyboer make them but I think he measures damn near everything. I'm not sure but I think he even measures the inductance and has that duplicated also. Very very important.

Try Marstran, Brain Wallace will take care of you.



i didn't know that it was Heyboer that made Sozos trannys that only people in his click were privi too.

I like ****** trannys the best, but have also built some great amps with Mercs and Heyboers. I think both of George's Heyboer spec 2" are great, I also have tried Chris's 2" and it's a bad mofo.

It all depends on how nice of an amp you you want to make it. You get out what you put in; You put top notch parts and go all out on the build, and your end product will be a sum of the parts, reguardless of which tranny you choose.

Any one of these brands can be made into a great amp, and there's many examples in these forums.

MARCO wrote:Heyboer=PUKE
MM=GOLD

Ignorance is bliss!

sozo is selling transformer now ?

Im really liking the metroamp dagnall clone over the merc. its much more organic compared to the additives in a merc IMHO.

Mark