deHavilland Electric Amplifier Company says hello to SH.tv

Greetings,

This is George Kielczynski, President of deHavilland Electric Amplifier Company. I just wanted to register on this wonderful forum that member audio has told me so much about and say hello to you all. I also wanted to introduce the topic of our line of single ended triode preamplifiers and amplifiers in the event that anyone has any questions or comments. I understand that deHavilland products have been discussed here lately and I wanted to check in personally and become a direct part of the wonderful activities going on here at Steve's site. We would love to hear from all of you.

Warm Regards and Happy Holidays,

George

 

Hi George,

I was very impressed by the sound of the equipment you had at the Pasadena show and I am a jaded listener

Thanks for stopping by and hopefully you will share your opinions when you can.

 

VTV Show

Thank you for your comments. I was sick from some stomach flu or food poisoning all day Thursday and most of Sat, Sun, and Monday. Oh, and the weather was so beautiful in Arcadia. The restaurant had all this wonderful food that I could not eat. Getting back to the show, we used the Hyperion HPS-938 loudspeakers. Kara, my partner and Chief engineer, is on a forever search for the elusive speaker system that gets as much right as she demands, and that is a VERY VERY TALL ORDER. The Hyperion's did sound rather nice, especially for their list price of $4500. Kara is a genius at room placement for speakers at these shows. We bought a pair and are going to hot rod them. They seem to do sooooo much right in the bass and midrange. We feel they need a little help in the tweeter area. If we get it right could be great speaker. We are thinking about using the Von Schweikert VR4jr's for CES. What do you think?
George

 

I have to say I am stunned by your comments in regards to the sound quality and what it shows in regards to your honesty. Though I didn't mention it before and it might seem made up now, the higher frequencies were definitely not equal to the rest of the sound quality. They were lacking in speed, air, and overall realism compared to the rest of the sound quality that was presented. Again thanks for the comments and you have my respect sir for your honesty.

 

Welcome!

 

I was at the show, and I thought Kara did a phenomenal job of getting great sound in that small hotel room. The diagonal placement brought out the deepest soundstage I have ever heard. It was the best sound of the show, easily.

I like the Hyperions a lot, too, and being a little familiar with them, I know that they are excellent values. I have yet to hear a Von Schweikert speaker, so I can't comment about them, but I do suggest that you listen to Devore Fidelity Gibbon Super 8s...they might make a nice match with the Mercury and the Aries.

 

I'm actually going to switch my listening room back to the living room, and make the family room the listening room. It's a strangely-shaped space, basically a rectangular room with a huge stone fireplace and a huge stone barbecue grill taking a weird chunk out of it. (Yes, an indoor grill. But I've never used it, but it looks really cool.)

I've been thinking that the only thing that will work is a diagonal set-up. Hearing the deHaviland set-up encouraged me to move forward with this.

 

What degree of angles are we talking about for diagonal placement?

Anyone have a visual? A picture would do me good.

 

With my 16 x 16 x 8 room, diagonal placement--and room treatment--helps tremendously to tame room modes.

John K.

 

Here is a write up of "diagonal" speaker placement.
Firstly, this is only one way of setting up speakers--it is not
necessarily better than a parallel-to-the-back-wall setup. We have found
this technique useful , especially in small hotel rooms at audio shows.
Essentially what we do is to set up the speakers on a line which forms a 15
to 30 degree angle with the rear wall. Your seating--a couch for example, is
parallel to a line drawn between the speakers-so that the couch also is at a
15 to 30 degree angle to the rear wall . Relative to your "sweet spot"
seating, your distance to each speaker is equal and the toe-in is equal.
Many times this will shift the placement of the system such that one corner
of the room is now somewhat between the speakers when viewed from the sweet
spot. Merlin for example has set up directly on the corner of a room with a
line bisecting the 90 degree room corner being a line coming to the sweet
spot direcly between the speakers. Most decor is not suited to directly on
the corner setup, and I cite this as only one possibility.
In a small room you can see that you get more space behind the speakers
by using some of a corner as the space behind the speakers. The advantage
here is that you can get this extra space without crowding the speakers too
close to the listening position. Also I believe this placement helps to
un-reinforce room nodes or standing waves due to the asymetry of the speaker
placement. A tape measure helps a lot to get the speakers equidistant from
the listening position, because the visual reference to the rear wall will
fool you when you set up on an offset

Kara Chaffee

 

If you go to the deHavilland web site and go to the product pages we have many pictures in our awards and show report sections. www.dehavillandhifi.com

Best wishes,

George

 

Thanks!!

 

Your room at vtv was amazing...the midrange was so fast and right on with those speakers and the 845 combo...thanks for coming out, and thanks for signing up for the site.

 

As I get into my project, which I'll probably be starting up in the next two or three weeks, I'll post pics.

 

The folks at deHavilland, in my experience, are some of the nicest, most open, and honest people in hi-fi. That is basically the whole reason that I developed a friendship with them. Back when I was first getting into tubes, I had contacted deHavilland one day because I found them on the net and wanted to ask some technical questions about the vintage integrated I was trying to get running. In other words, I was basically a time waster...but didn't know where else to turn and they happened to be close by.

When I called, Kara answered the phone. She went OUT OF HER WAY to help me, talk to me about tubes, answer my questions, etc. Then I ended up convincing her to work on my Fisher X-202-B and so I made the trip to their facility. As soon as I sat down in their listening room, my jaw hit the floor and it was all over. I've made many trips to deHavilland just to listen...hear the latest stuff, and what not. I'm a huge fan, as I'm sure many of you already know. Kara and I have since become close personal friends. George isn't so bad either.

 

I'll second that.....and I'm pretty sure that deHavilland has been written up more than once in the past for their creativity and fantastic success in terms of room setup at various shows. Here's another amusing anecdote about Kara and her room placement formula for you:

When I first purchased my Quad 57s, I had been pulling my hair out for no less than TWO WEEKS trying to make them sound good in my very small and hard-to-work-with listening space. No matter how hard I tried, I could not get them to sound right and do their thing. I was so frustrated that I was just about to give up and sell them. Enter Kara Chaffee. Kara drives up to my place to check out the speakers. She walks in and starts tearing my room apart....ordering me to move this and move that. I started to get upset....told her she was nuts....this would never work....."what the hell are you doing?"...etc. So I played along and she comes up with...you guessed it...this semi-diagonal setup....and she says "sit down". I sat down in the listening position she had devised and I was just totally blown away. She accomplished in about fifteen minutes what I had been trying for two weeks.....a perfect setup, deep soundstage, and immaculate and focused dead-center image. She made these speakers work in my room, and that was no easy task from my perspective. Thanks, Kara!

 

George,

If I may be perfectly candid, I think these speakers are very over-hyped relative to sound quality. Maybe I have suffered from hearing them in hotel rooms at hifi shows but I would go another route.

Go Quad or Maggie!

 

Hi George! Welcome, welcome, welcome! I've never heard any of your equipment. Want my address?

 

Quads would be cool!

 

Definitely cool. But you might not get a lot of oomph out of 25wpc. Have you tried it yet?

 

George personally, I feel that pairing your product with a high efficiency speaker product from the Zu loudspeaker company would have great results. Depending on the speaker price you are going for you could pick either the Definition or the druid. Now the definition is going to rape the the world ( please pardon that expression ) with one of you 845 amplifiers. Maybe you could get zu to loan you a pair for ces..Just a thought

 

One of the things worth noting about deHavilland's amps is that they have zero problem driving inefficient speakers. I've been there for listening sessions and these people are using ridiculously inefficient stuff around 85db in a large room and the amps don't even hint at running out of steam. They are shockingly powerful and dynamic for SET amps, IME, so I would say they'd probably do just fine and I would personally love to hear the results. I'm sure it would be a divine combo.