What if one rebiased the question? What if an experienced tube-amp designer was tasked—or tasked himself—with designing a sand amp? How would he approach it? In the case of one Alexey Syomin from Russia, extensively chronicled in these pages already, his resultant class A/B White Knight integrated does get massive output transformers. It even uses a 5Hz-300kHz stepup transformer for passive 32V gain. Transformer gain we know of from low-output cartridges. It's rarer in power amplifiers though FirstWatt and Audio Consulting are two easy precedents. In typical SET fashion, the White Knight uses no negative feedback. But then, neither do solid-state electronics from Ayre Acoustics or others. For balanced power, the overbuilt bipolar supply runs on four vertically aligned toroidal line transformers. This array pursues maximal noise rejection on the AC mains. It also contributes heftily to the final weight.


"Each channel has two power transformers, one for '+', one for '-'. To wind these, we use high-precision machines. They guarantee perfect symmetry of the power supply poles. Transistors suffer distortion when rising temps lead to higher current conduction and eventual failure. My aim was to create a constant quiescent current regardless of temperature. Other parts require their own thermal stabilization to operate best. In our case, transistors operate at 70°C, capacitors at 60C° and resistors between 40-50C°. We stabilize our transistors with Beryllium oxide couplers. Our output module runs 24 powerful transistors, 6 for thermal control, 18 for current gain. Capacitors too alter behaviour with rising temps. We stabilize this with different thermally conductive compounds. Partitions inside our module prevent these compounds from mixing. This locks in optimal working parameters for different parts. The only downside is extreme complexity for assembly of our potted modules. It's time consuming and uses 6kg of exotic compounds to add serious labour and parts costs." Military-grade sealed relays act as input switchers. 'Direct' mode bypasses the volume control for the first input. It converts our integrated into a pure stereo power amp. Delivering 90/180wpc into 8/4Ω, the first 20 watts operate in class A. The attenuator is a simple variable resistor at the amplifier input.