yeah I f’d up last year… I had an insane offer to buy a linestage (375 shipped listing) and balked. There was too much going on with my chain at that time and just wasn’t thinking clearly… Was easily my biggest miss of last year not buying the QS pre.
I’ll keep my eyes open for the mid monos going forward.
I had the mid mono’s and can say they were great. I’ve since moved on to lower wattage amplifiers as well as single chassis as a preference. Nothing but positive experiences listening to music with them!
Hey guys, i am wondering if the Quicksilver is supposed to have enough power to properly drive the LCD-4. The reason i ask is because Audeze says it needs 0.5w into 200 ohms but my calculations say the Quicksilver only delivers 0.24w.
The LCD4 still sounds awesome driven by the Quicksilver but i do like it a bit more driven by the OOR. Could that be because of the low power output or just synergy?
It’s probably somewhat more that 0.24W, but not twice as much, power numbers don’t work quite the same for transformer coupled tube amps, because the load is a part of the circuit, and affects the gain.
If it gets loud enough it’s more likely to be an issue with synergy, one thing you’ll find with tube amps with output transformers, is if they don’t have multiple headphone taps and are designed for lower impedance headphones, they get more and more linear (read dryer) as the headphone impedance increases, and that might be some of what your hearing.
Thanks for the explanation, your description does match what i am hearing. It still sounds awesome but if i am not getting that “tubey” kind of sound out of it i may as well use the OOR which is a more precise and capable amp.
I’m going to be listing my Quicksilver for sale in all the usual places early next week. I wanted to give folks here a heads up in case someone might be interested.
I also have a rather large collection of tubes I’ve acquired for it over the last few years. I easily have $1000+ in 12AX7s and EL84s, so I’d be happy to make a package deal with the amp.
Hit me up if you might be interested!
Thanks,
CK
I would list it in the for sale section here.
No one tell @NickMimi.
I will eventually if need be, but I’m going out of town for the weekend and haven’t taken any pictures or anything yet. All I’ve done is post in all the active Quicksilver threads I’m a part of.
Pick up a new amp?
Yeah, I got a Cen.Grand 9i-806 “Little Silver Fox” earlier this week. It’s a massive solid-state amp. I’ve decided to get out of the tube game for a while.
Guys, maybe you can help me better understand something.
I am using my Ferrum OOR as a pre-amp for the Quicksilver, and i noticed a BIG difference between using it or directly connecting the Quicksilver into my Gumby.
When i use the Quicksilver to power the Abyss 1266 i use the OOR in high gain and set the volume around 12 oclock, that allows me to run the Quicksilver around 12 oclock as well.
I have read that the SE outputs from the Gumny are not the best so connecting the Gumby via XLR into the OOR and then using the SE from the OOR into the Quicksilver removes that from the equation, but i wanted to understand if what i am doing here is OK, i worry that the power output from the OOR may be too high and that it can damage the Quicksilver?
I love this setup to death, just wanted to make sure i am not doing something dangerous for my gear here 
You won’t kill anything except maybe the headphones ( and that’s unlikely).
The way a class A amp works is it’s a fixed gain device, all your doing is attenuating the input with the volume pot. Increase the input past the maximum output voltage and it will clip.
Tube amps tend to “soft clip”, so they don’t suddenly produce lots of nasty artifacts that will kill the headphone.
Now is it a good idea, you’re basically using the Orr as a pre amp, if you like the sound that way go for it, but it will sound different.
It’s generally considered bad practice to stack amps with volume controls this way, but as I said it’s mostly harmless so if you like the sound use it that way.
FWIW The Gumby’s SE out isn’t as bad as a lot of people claim
Thanks for the reply! Good to hear i can use my setup with this configuration.
Isn’t that the case for every scenario in which you have a pre-amp though?
No most power amps have no pot. They assume you have a pre to control the input volume.
Pots are bad for a host of reasons, they are basically a metal wiper on a conductive plastic or carbon substrate, so they tend to be the worst quality resistor in the circuit, they also make it difficult to control the implicit high pass filter on the amps input, because changing the volume moves the filter (though it’s usually very ultrasonic). Switched resistors are better, but they don’t always offer fixed impedance.
Running a preamp into a headphone amp you always have 2 volumes, unless your amp can by pass it’s volume control (I only know of one that can). And I’d probably consider it the same as what you’re doing. The big difference with dedicated preamps, is their optimized to drive high impedance loads, like 10K+ Ohms not the 60 or so from a headphone,
Just to make sure i understand this, the issue is not related to the signal levels or any characteristics on the signal itself, but is related to a loss in quality due to an extra component which ideally would not be present, the volume pot.
Is that correct?
That’s big quality issue, along with compounding the distortion.
You can overdrive the quicksilver in this case, but it’s not going to hurt the amp and it’s self limiting in that you’ll hear the distortion and stop turning the volume knob.
In the extreme you could damage an amp by providing it too high a signal level on it’s input, transistors and tubes both have maximum rated voltages for that, but the Orr won’t get loud enough to do that.
Hello,
I would check with Quicksilver Audio if I were you.
The decisive factor is how much input voltage the Quicksilver can handle.
If they say that only 2-2.5 is permissible via RCA, I would want to stay within this range and avoid XLR accordingly.
This will also give you a softer sound if you go completely via RCA.
I would use XLR via the ORR, also because it was designed for this.
The other thing I would check is if you can use tubes under the 12AX7,5751 as well as 12AT7 these are all tubes that have less Mu factor in the Mu gain.
If you use the Orr as a pre and you have the okay with the tubes, it would be easier for you to hit the sweet spot and you have more room to adjust the Orr.
I think that you would then move towards 12 - 15 o’clock.
If there is no release, I would set the Orr so that it is generally quieter, so that you have more fine tuning on the Quicksilver at the potentiometer.
If it’s not enough then you can always turn up the Orr a bit more for the sweet spot.
And I wouldn’t go beyond the sweet spot.
Hope that helps you.
I asked Mike at Quicksilver about using different tubes back when I had this amp. He told me the amp was designed to be used with only 12AX7s. He didn’t recommend using anything else.
Obviously, many QHA owners have used other tube types successfully. I just wanted to relay what response you’re likely to get from the manufacturer if you ask.
I’m a little surprised, because the 12 xx7 family are the same in terms of construction and heating data, even distant relatives such as 5751, 6201 etc…
The only difference is that the Mu factor between them is different.
12au7 20 mu factor
12at7 50 mu factor
12ax7 100 mu factor
While 6201 is slightly higher than 12at7 and 5751 is around 70.
Unless the Quicksilver works slightly differently that would be the only possibility.
I just looked up the email from Mike from a few years ago. I had specifically asked him about using 5751 tubes in the QHA, and his response was short and to the point:
“Only 12AX7s should be used as the 5751 will not operate at the correct voltage.”
And again, I’m not lobbying for only using 12AX7s in the amp. Many QHA owners prefer to use some alternative tubes in the 12A*7 family. I stuck with 12AX7s myself, but I was new to tube amps at the time and didn’t want to void my warranty. In hindsight, I wish I tried a few more tube types in the amp.