Metropoulos Forum

$1600 for an OT? Uh, no thank you.

Bluesgeetar wrote:http://cgi.ebay.com/Radiospares-De-Luxe ... p1638.m122

And what would one do with it...let it sit on THEIR shelf for two decades
and then sell it for 1600 GBP. As soon as it's wired into an amp, it's no longer NIB and the price drops like a Led Z....

It would make a nice DOOR-STOP, though.

Actually if that was the right transformer and I had the amp that needed that OT $1600 is cheap. You're talking about an amp that sells for $12000 yes three zeros so one with the wrong transformer can go from $2000 to $12000 with the right OT. Seems cheap to me.

i emailed the guy, he's a real asshole !
at first he tried to sell both in one auction for twice that price !
i made the best offer but too low for him it seems.
there was no pictures at first in his auction except of the boxes !
so i asked some pictures and he said they were packed !
for that price , i wanted to be sure they were the real ones , especialy sold from singapour but after 3 emails, the guy called me time waster as i was telling him i was wondering if it was reasonable i spend that much in OT's (obviously not !) and the guy answered :
" you don't have to tell me what's reasonable or not... blah blah blah " !
PRICK !

908ssp wrote:Actually if that was the right transformer and I had the amp that needed that OT $1600 is cheap. You're talking about an amp that sells for $12000 yes three zeros so one with the wrong transformer can go from $2000 to $12000 with the right OT. Seems cheap to me.

If I had THAT amp, in THAT situation, I wouldn't be looking at it on Ebay today.... I'd already have bought it. And, the Seller could easily have contacted DOZENS of Marshall refurbers , easily found on the net, and 'introduced" them to that item and made a sale if the demand were there, avoiding the Ebay fees. He's looking for a fish. We'll see where it stands on 2/21..

yes, maybe you're right.

Can you say 'Knock Off'!

This is a bogus item....BTW Udo Pipper (search the forum here if you don't know who he is) lately has said, the Marstran Radio Spares replica is excellent and is virtually identical in tone...for about a grand less.

Cole

As much as I like my Marstran transformers they won't make $2000 JTM45 worth $12000.

Well if you have a jtm45 offset like I know a guy that does (number 8 of all times with the maching cab...), he payed 12k for the head and 8k for the cab with Goddman cones in it, I'll have pics of it soon and show it here, so if he would blow his OT, he would need that one to keep the amp value up.., but not at that price, those originals are worth 600-800 bucks at most (market)

marstran transformers are really nice from what i have heard with my 103 OT but i'm surprise Udo says the RS marstran clone is sounding very close to the original , cause i have an original park 45 with 784 103 OT/kt66 and a jtm45 clone with exact same specifications , mullard mustard and carbon comp resistors with marstran 103 OT , when i play with presence on 4 and treble on 3 on the clone jtm45, the sound is still much more trebly than the original 784 103 park 45 I have with treble and presence on 5.
also, the clone is not as thick sounding in the mids.
i'm sure the taper of the pots are not exactly the same and the caps/resistors values might differ a bit, as the B+ voltage that is higher in the original amp , but unless there is a cap that has gone bad or drifted in one of the amps (i don't think so but who knows !) , i'm not sure it explains the brightness difference.

i suppose all those original OT's were sounding a bit different from each other and the 784 103 OT i have is 42 years old but the brightness difference is there from what i experienced personnaly .

i have an original used RS Deluxe in good shape i just bought for the normal market price (which is already very high) and might order a marstran RS Deluxe OT clone to compare

****** is closer to all the other guys, you all should try he's jtm45 clone... He cloned his Radio spare deluxe OTs (and he has not one but over 10 at least..). accurate to 99.99%. 6.6k, 8k or 9k primaries and you must hook up the wires to each other just like the original to make it the one you want, etc, but he can fix that for you to be more practicle...

yes, i might try his RS Deluxe, especialy as he said he loves darker trannies, the marstran 103 is a bit too bright for me .

Electiksychurch,
you are absolutely right. There is more to an amp than the OT. I still have one 65 JTM which belongs to a friend. This is the one Larry showed in close ups and is introduced in my videofiles. This amp is sounding smoother, darker and deeper than the amp I built for myself. But the Marstran tranny was a big step towards the sound of the real thing as were the mullard caps, the CC resistors, the perfect voltage balance, the right tubes and so on. There are not two amps in existence sounding excactly the same. I have the feeling that the Marstan RS is offering nearly the same musical texture I was looking for. The rest is finetuning and dialing pots. At least it needs time to break in. I'm sure it will doing better and better over the next month. I'm just producing some videofiles to show how close those amps can sound. BTW I like the files of forum member Marty who built a metro Bluesbreaker. His sound is amazing and has very much a real vintage vibe. It's so much fun to watch his approach for the perfect tone.

If you grabbed a 40 year old amp off a shelf where its been sitting for 40 years unplayed it may not have the smoothness either? I tend to think Metro's maybe sound more the way vintage amps sounded brand new. Maybe not? But caps and speakers and tranys, and tubes, everything, breaks in so that you can hear its effect short term. What about long term? Maybe the edge gets worked out completely and they sound smooth? Anyone feel like donating $1200 to the cause so I can test this theory with that trany?