Hello to all of you,
I 've read your posts very carefully. I am a ( happy?) owner of a FAME BVH 300 since 30th of June of this year. I was really curious about this amp as many of you. Please let me introduce myself in short: I am a half a century aged man born and living in Greece. I started with tube amplifier constructions since my twelve ( yes twelve ) years old and I am still following this unique kind of music reproduction till now.
All these years I studied electronics and I worked on the most kind of radio services ( maritime radio telecommunication - civil aviation administration etc ). But music is music and almost everything is done for her.
For the BVH 300 my opinion is almost similar with T-BASS's.
When I unpacked my own one I started directly to unscrew the cage / chassis screws to have a look inside. In fact it was something more than I was expected for this price. So, I started immediately to add the most IMHO importand to an amplifier with so many KT88's, the total capacitance of the power unit. I added two 470μF/350 WV in series to have a total of 400μF / 700 WV for the rest of the test and it's play-life. After then I plugged a 2X15'' / 600 Watts /4 ohms speaker
then the power cord in the wall outlet and... came to life.
Three minutes for the fillaments then Hi Tension ON and the DMM in the rear outlets to check the most critical in such a high power amp, the BIAS.
I started loughing becase even after half an hour static work ( without any signal ) there was not even a couple of tubes biased equally or near to. I measured 22 to 46mV, all tubes different. Following all the till now knowledge and experience, I desided to bias them at 45mV all of them. ( A+ = 620 Vdc ).
The only bass guitar I have is a PEAVEY T40 with DI MARGIO.
I played for a while ( at 30 W ) but the sound was "thin" even by the push of the boost switch. I turn the master to 12 o'clock and the gain to 3 o'clock and the mirackle happened.
A clean / fat sound got out of the speakers as is expected of an amp like this. The neighbours opened the windows. In a few minutes I tried to crank up the master volume and the gain to 4 o'clock. THIS was a rich tube sound with good low end and a lot of harmonics. The neigbours closed their windows and run away. ( The BEST Power meter ! )
As a result I can say that the price to sound quality is 6-7.
The price to construction 7-8. The price to power is 10 !!!
I hope to find a few hours during August to change some capacitors and perhaps some resistors in TONE zone as to change also the pre and driver tubes with groove tubes that they already gave me very good results in guitar amps and after all to change the Chinese tubes with KT88 Penta Labs.
Thanks for your passion to read this long post but music is very important and worths the best... I will come back when I have something realy important to share with you.
Many thanks.
