Alan Eaton 45 Tube Amplifier
I’ve been building amplifiers for decades, and I discovered Alan Eaton’s 45 tube amp at the end of 2021. Finally I had just purchased the first superb speakers that allowed me to use a 2w/ch amplifier – the Charney Maestro Extreme with Voxativ A2.6 drivers. This is not the first time I spent money acquiring a single driver speaker systemt but is the only time that I was pleased. My last experience was as a distributor when I imported 4 pair of Rethm single driver speakers. I didn’t like those at all and sold them as quickly as I could. So now that I had these new speakers it was time to purchase a good 2w/ch amplifier. I pre-ordered the Decware Anniversary Edition Zen amp (with a 2 year wait time) and I also purchased Alan Eaton’s 45 tube amp. Alan had one in stock and I purchased it right away.
At $1,500 including tubes, this was an easy purchase for me. Prior to this time, I had avoided using a 45 tube amp since finding a good pair of single driver speakers was the most difficult thing to do (I hadn’t found anything before purchasing the Charney speakers that I liked) and I was consequently using speakers between 90db and 95db efficient. Not this time around, however, since I now have the perfect speakers and they are 101db efficient – a perfect sensitivity for a good 2W amp. I’ve been looking for these for a very long time.
I paid retail just like you do for Eaton amp and was just a normal “customer” in the beginning. However, when I shared my last 2A3 amp build photos with Alan, he immediately wanted me to build a CNC chassis for his own 45 tubed amp build. I designed his chassis and provided my CNC source and gave him an array of high end parts to do his own build. As a trade, he sent me the vintage Tamura transformer set that he uses to somewhat compensate me for what I sent to him.
Alan has been building amps for 50 years and maybe has another 5 years of building left. If you want one of the best sounding low watt amps at the most affordable price, contact Alan and order one before he quits building. I don’t receive anything for this recommendation and never have done anything in this profession to make money. I’ve always spent what I made as a dealer or distributor on building my own items and then would sell them at a loss just to try different approaches.. I’ve always tried to provide something that others can use and have built my own components in the best possible way using the highest possible approach for each design. I’ve spent all of my time (and money) doing R&D because I love music and used to be a professional jazz piano player. I”m one of the few people that actually knows from direct experience what solid platinum, solid gold, solid silver, and solid copper wire does when placed in a high end audio circuit. This alone cost me over $5,000 to hear the differences. Now, I just build components to go beyond what others are creating.
I built my own upgraded 45 tube amp design using Alan’s circuit design (I found this approach to sound better than anything I’ve heard before) and his Tamura transformer set and am amazed at how good my system sounded. It is the best audio system I’ve ever built or heard and I’m so pleased with this exercise that I’ve quit building all OEM components that I used to offer. Instead, I’m focused exclusively on this one component – my extremely upgraded version of Alan’s integrated 45 tube amp and I’ve built it one more time with even higher quality parts and this is the amp you now see on my home page (the 2nd version). You also don’t need a preamplifier with this amp if you want to achieve the best possible sound quality for the least amount of money spent. If you do, I highly recommend that you use the icON 4Pro passive preamp with Apple remote to extend the features on this amp (remote, microprocessor control, the best sound quality, and the ability to connect both digital and analog sources).
It definitely was worth my spending over $7k on just the parts for this upgraded build versus the $1.5k to purchase Alan’s completed amp. You on the other hand, can purchase his $1.5k amp and then wonder why you’d spend $3k on something like the Decware 25th Anniversary Zen tube amp instead. I think you will be pleasantly surprised since that’s what I initially did (ordered a Decware amp) and finally dropped my Decware order a few months after making it.
The Decware amp costs twice what Alan charges and the wait time is at least 2 years (possibly more). In all honesty, I love the 45 tube rather than the 6DJ8 type of power tube that Decware is using. I have ordered one of their 25th anniversary Zen amps on just to find out what it sounds like. I ordered mine in October of 2021 and probably have another two years before I see it and can actually do a proper comparison. I might even cancel that order and just move on. The wait time is unreasonable.
I CANCELLED MY DECWARE ZEN 25TH ANNIVERSARY AMP ORDER
Contact Alan and inquire about his 45 tube amp. I’m sure you’ll be pleased you did and I think it is a better alternative. Alan’s email address is located below. I’ve entered it as an image so it can’t be used by online robots. Type the address in your email program and send him an email to begin a beautiful journey:
ALAN EATON’S EMAIL ADDRESS:
