Hey Dr. D. You absolutely nailed the First Watt sound. Your picture is dead on. A friend of mine built an F6 (25wpc into 8ohms) and it totally blew me away. His preamp is tube based, as is his phono pre. It definitely didn’t sound like a SS amp. It also had great oomph and overall fantastic balance and clarity. The instrument realism and separation is stunning. I borrowed the amp to try in my system and I’m now waiting for diy audio to get the F6 or an F5 kits bsck in stock… I’m running some Tekton Pendragons, which are aprox 95dB sensitive, so I’m sure the First Watt will have no problem at all. Thanks for this great vid.
I build clones of Nelson Pass. Here are a few reasons why the F3 and other amps sound so well. The Firstwatt amps run class A and a lot of tube amps run class AB. It makes a difference. The power Mos Fets used in a lot of these amps have a pentode like transfer curve. A pentode configuration is usually a tube thing. These Mos Fet devices are amazing. In the J2 and the SIT amplifiers used Semisouth SIT transistors. These are VFET devices. Great linearity and sound. Unfortunately, SIT devices are in short supply and the few available are in short supply. The F3 uses a small power Fet to modulate a power output MosFet. This configuration cancels our a lot of distortion. When you get a wideband amp that can accurately reproduce harmonics you have a winner. A tube amp usually has to have an output transformer to drive speakers. Often the output transformer also acts like a bandwith filter. Well there are a few insights. Enjoy listening.
Thank you for your videos. I’m relatively new to the hi-fi world and it’s so hard to cut through the BS and gatekeepers to get trustworthy information. I’m very curious about First Watt. What was your listening experience with the SIT-3 like compared to the F3? More so, I hope you’re recovery is going well. Both my parents are cancer survivors. You got this. 👊🏼
Thank you for the comments. IMO, I prefer the F3 over the SIT3 mainly because I thought the F3 had a sweeter, prettier tube sound while the SIT3 sounds a more dark and thick more like the actual solid state that it is. The SIT3 is a nice amp, but I definitely preferred the F3.
Amps are not meant to have a "sound" - they are meant to simply amplify (make an exact copy of the input signal only with much higher voltage and current) if they have a "sound" they are processing / filtering / modifying the original source material
Hey Dr. D. You absolutely nailed the First Watt sound. Your picture is dead on. A friend of mine built an F6 (25wpc into 8ohms) and it totally blew me away. His preamp is tube based, as is his phono pre. It definitely didn’t sound like a SS amp. It also had great oomph and overall fantastic balance and clarity. The instrument realism and separation is stunning.
I borrowed the amp to try in my system and I’m now waiting for diy audio to get the F6 or an F5 kits bsck in stock… I’m running some Tekton Pendragons, which are aprox 95dB sensitive, so I’m sure the First Watt will have no problem at all.
Thanks for this great vid.
Thanks for all your videos....I am learning quite a lot!!!!!!
Me too!
Nelson Pass Amplifiers are actually the best amplifiers in the world.
I build clones of Nelson Pass. Here are a few reasons why the F3 and other amps sound so well. The Firstwatt amps run class A and a lot of tube amps run class AB. It makes a difference. The power Mos Fets used in a lot of these amps have a pentode like transfer curve. A pentode configuration is usually a tube thing. These Mos Fet devices are amazing. In the J2 and the SIT amplifiers used Semisouth SIT transistors. These are VFET devices. Great linearity and sound. Unfortunately, SIT devices are in short supply and the few available are in short supply. The F3 uses a small power Fet to modulate a power output MosFet. This configuration cancels our a lot of distortion. When you get a wideband amp that can accurately reproduce harmonics you have a winner. A tube amp usually has to have an output transformer to drive speakers. Often the output transformer also acts like a bandwith filter. Well there are a few insights. Enjoy listening.
Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for your videos. I’m relatively new to the hi-fi world and it’s so hard to cut through the BS and gatekeepers to get trustworthy information. I’m very curious about First Watt. What was your listening experience with the SIT-3 like compared to the F3?
More so, I hope you’re recovery is going well. Both my parents are cancer survivors. You got this. 👊🏼
Thank you for the comments. IMO, I prefer the F3 over the SIT3 mainly because I thought the F3 had a sweeter, prettier tube sound while the SIT3 sounds a more dark and thick more like the actual solid state that it is. The SIT3 is a nice amp, but I definitely preferred the F3.
@@drde4010 Very interesting. Thank you for sharing.
drD E: Great post. But could you review your whole system--the other components, speakers, cables, dedicated lines, power conditioner, etc.
Yea I’ll cover that in another video.
Amps are not meant to have a "sound" - they are meant to simply amplify (make an exact copy of the input signal only with much higher voltage and current) if they have a "sound" they are processing / filtering / modifying the original source material
If you say so.
In concept, sure, but considering almost every part used in an amplifier has an impact on sound, in reality that is rarely the case.
The output transistors Nelson uses in the f3 behave very much like a triode tube when they are operated within a certain range.