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Double Bass Can't Walter Woods be Cloned?

#21
If we're comparing Walter Woods amps to Acoustic Image and the replies coming in seem to all fairly well agree as to the lack of power in the Clarus, to me it's evident we should be talking about the AI Focus.

The Series II I have puts out 600watts into 4ohms but the new Series III will do 800@ 4ohms and 1000 @ 2ohms!

The WWU is still probably going to overpower it, but then it gets a lot closer to which sound/price you prefer.

I A/B'd a WW green light and AI Focus last month and just loved them both. Completely different animals, but both worth having in the arsenal and if one cannot afford a WW but needs/wants something small, powerful and toneful then the AI Focus is a great choice.

Just have to check it out for yourself to see if you like the tonality but personally, I love it! :D
 
#22
When Ken Jung and I compared the Pre Amp Sections of the
Focus and the Walter Woods Electro Acoustic Amps, there was guite a bit of difference in their voicing.

Using a Realist as the reference pickup on my Mirecourt Bass
the timber that the Walter Woods emphasized in the midrange and treble frequencies was much more like the acoustic sound of the instrument itself, with a boost. It's not really a "flat" sound at all but a complementary emphasis in those frequencies, so the instrument "sings". We were using a LDS 3X8 as the reference cabinet. With that specific combination the Woods had a much more musical sound.

Ric
 
#24
I own a WW Ultra that I purchased back in 2002, an AI New Yorker, and a Series II AI Focus 1R. I play mostly two different uprights or an Eminence EUB although I do have doubling gigs as well. Once I got the hang of adjusting the High Pass filter on the Focus to adjust for boomy rooms or pickups, I've come to prefer the sound of the Focus to the Woods for both upright and bass guitar. I also love the sound of the Clarus SL amp in the New Yorker, although I've only used it for upright. I'm planning on selling my Ultra although I can't decide whether to sell it in this country or in Scotland when I'm over there this Summer. I'm also bringing my New Yorker to Scotland to became my main gigging amp, replacing an ancient GK MB150E that sounds fine on bass guitar but is just not good enough, IMHO, for upright bass. If it is a matter of loudness, I have never been in a situation where either the Focus or the WW Ultra was even breathing hard when they hit volumes that were way beyond what I will ever play.

This past Saturday night I had an interesting situation develop on a gig. I was playing a corporate Christmas party for about 100 people in a medium-sized room, and had taken my Focus, a Contra EX and a Schroeder Mini12+ cabinet with me so that I would have plenty of volume for the second half of the gig when we switched over to 70's and 80's pop, rock and dance music at what were high volumes to me. During the first half of the gig I played the Eminence doing jazz standards and Christmas tunes. For the second half, I brought out my old P bass. When I got to the gig, I discovered that I had screwed up and left the speakon equipped speaker cable at home with no time to go and get it. So, I just cranked up the Focus into the single Contra EX cabinet and was pleasantly surprised to find that I was able to get all of the volume that I needed with just the one cabinet.

Anyhow, both the Woods and AI gear are fine amplifiers but the "corrective eq" embodied in the notch/high pass filter makes the Focus a more versatile and practical amp for me since I play so many different rooms with different acoustics.

Erik Hansen
 
#25
I don't think Walter Woods DOES get 1200 watts from that small box at that weight. i think there's some funky rating going on. I don't doubt the man's talent, and I believe that he makes great amps, but I don't see how he got a special exemption from the known laws of physics.
 
#26
DRURB said:
Ah, a voice of reason! Thanks, fdeck. Performance measures of the amp alone into a dummy load would not suffice for me. I'd like to see how it behaves into a realistic load that of complex impedance. As you know, circuits that many claim to be "magical" are often so because of response peculiarities that come about as a result of the interaction of the amp and the load. These are often quite sonically desirable to many.
Click to expand...
I can't make any guesses about the WW design, but a typical solid state power amp should be unaffected by the speaker load. If an amp has a damping factor of 100, then its output impedance is so low that the effect of a typical bass speaker's complex impedance will be a small fraction of a dB.

As it turns out, a bass speaker is not a difficult load. The impedance can't go below the DC resistance of the coil.

But a comparison of small-signal frequency response with and without a speaker load would tell you what you need to know.

Incidentally, I am now playing with the freeware RMAA audio analysis software, and it is really cool.
 
#27
PB+J said:
I don't think Walter Woods DOES get 1200 watts from that small box at that weight. i think there's some funky rating going on. I don't doubt the man's talent, and I believe that he makes great amps, but I don't see how he got a special exemption from the known laws of physics.
Click to expand...
Which law? The only one I know of that is applicable states that the efficiency can't exceed 100%. In other words, the heat sink doesn't get cold when you crank up the volume :)

A straightforward Class-D design with switchmode power supply could deliver 1200 W without breaking into a sweat. If the WW is a Class-AB, then I would be mildly skeptical of the heat sink size. But there are other options such as Class-H.
 
#28
fdeck said:
Which law? The only one I know of that is applicable states that the efficiency can't exceed 100%. In other words, the heat sink doesn't get cold when you crank up the volume :)

A straightforward Class-D design with switchmode power supply could deliver 1200 W without breaking into a sweat. If the WW is a Class-AB, then I would be mildly skeptical of the heat sink size. But there are other options such as Class-H.
Click to expand...

+1 Very small, very light, high powered switching class D amps have been around for a long time. However, Walter's amps do seem to sound better than most, and to be particularly small and lightweight.
 
#30
Ric Vice said:
Hubert Liegos who has been known to repair a few Walter Woods in his time, has his own amplifier. It has many of the features of the classic Walter Woods Amplifiers.

If anyone could actually build a "homage to Walter" it would be Mr. Liegos. I think the last time I looked it cost around $1,600.00 and is a 200 watt amplifier. So evidently, it's more difficult to built a Walter Woods than we would like to think. IMHO
Ric
Click to expand...
Right you are Ric. Hubert just released a 300 watt version (4ohms) that he says drives less efficient cabinets better that his original 200 watt, which is still being made. He also has a 500 watt version coming out in 2006. The only issue is he's a one-man shop too, and with the exchange rate, it won't be any cheaper nor faster to get. In fact, it could be more expensive, if you compare on ratings. But, it will be an alternative. Hubert claims his sound better than WW's. It'll be interesting to find out for sure...
 
#31
macmrkt said:
Right you are Ric. Hubert just released a 300 watt version (4ohms) that he says drives less efficient cabinets better that his original 200 watt, which is still being made. He also has a 500 watt version coming out in 2006. The only issue is he's a one-man shop too, and with the exchange rate, it won't be any cheaper nor faster to get. In fact, it could be more expensive, if you compare on ratings. But, it will be an alternative. Hubert claims his sound better than WW's. It'll be interesting to find out for sure...
Click to expand...
Do you have any contact info?

Everytime I've tried an online search I get nothing on him and his amps. :confused:
 
#34
macmrkt said:
Right you are Ric. Hubert just released a 300 watt version (4ohms) that he says drives less efficient cabinets better that his original 200 watt, which is still being made. He also has a 500 watt version coming out in 2006. The only issue is he's a one-man shop too, and with the exchange rate, it won't be any cheaper nor faster to get. In fact, it could be more expensive, if you compare on ratings. But, it will be an alternative. Hubert claims his sound better than WW's. It'll be interesting to find out for sure...
Click to expand...

Mackmrkt,
Another scoop from the co-designer of the LDS 2X8 3 way!

It's really a shame that the Dollar is so weak against the Euro. Hubert Liegos has been working on digital amplifiers that have lower distortion
levels than other current designs. If he has licked that problem, then he most likely has a winner, especially with the higher power versions of the DBA on the way.

Ric
 
#35
What you can't clone about Walter Woods is the same thing you can't clone about Coca-Cola: The allure associated with the name. I bet if you could go into Guitar Center and see piles of Walter Woods amps stacked up like Crates or Fenders they wouldn't have the same allure.

(I'd also be willing to bet that with careful tweaking you could make a clean amp with flexible tone controls- say, an EA- sound enough like a WW amp to fool someone in a blind listening test.)
 
#36
mje said:
What you can't clone about Walter Woods is the same thing you can't clone about Coca-Cola: The allure associated with the name. I bet if you could go into Guitar Center and see piles of Walter Woods amps stacked up like Crates or Fenders they wouldn't have the same allure.

(I'd also be willing to bet that with careful tweaking you could make a clean amp with flexible tone controls- say, an EA- sound enough like a WW amp to fool someone in a blind listening test.)
Click to expand...

Since Walter builds them one at a time, we are never likely to see them stacked up like Crates or Fenders. As far as the "blindfold test" goes, I would agree with you, that the EA could probably fool most of us. Walter Woods amplifiers are very well made and you pay a premium price for them, IMHO, they are worth the money, but if you can't afford one their are lots of very good sounding
options these days.

Ric
 
#37
mje said:
(I'd also be willing to bet that with careful tweaking you could make a clean amp with flexible tone controls- say, an EA- sound enough like a WW amp to fool someone in a blind listening test.)
Click to expand...

There are some people who couldn't tell the difference
between a P bass and a 1980 Musicman. That dosen't
mean they sound the same. I wasn't able to make an
EA 500 sound anything like a Woods. We tried. WE TRIED!
I've had both amps on gigs at the same time. Life would
be easier if I could have made them sound more alike.
 
#38
B String said:
There are some people who couldn't tell the difference
between a P bass and a 1980 Musicman. That dosen't
mean they sound the same. I wasn't able to make an
EA 500 sound anything like a Woods. We tried. WE TRIED!
I've had both amps on gigs at the same time. Life would
be easier if I could have made them sound more alike.
Click to expand...
It's a hit-and-miss affair to make two "voiced" amps sound alike, because it takes a lucky combination of amp voicings and EQ bands. Also, remember to match the gains of the two amps, and use the same kind of speaker on each.

An analyzer might help. I keep talking about the freeware RMAA program. It really works. You can learn a lot about what you are dealing with, between different amps.
 
#39
fdeck said:
I can't make any guesses about the WW design, but a typical solid state power amp should be unaffected by the speaker load.
Click to expand...


The operative word is "should." My point was that some manufacturers of "magical" devices make sure that this is NOT the case. I am NOT saying that is true for the WW. Still, even solid-state amps of conventional design do vary in their ability to drive complex loads but, as I'm sure you know, it is largely a matter of current capability when the impedance drops.
 
#40
I have an WW MI 200-8 "Sweeper" (that is 3 way parametric EQ). This amp has the Bi-amp feature, meaning it has a variable crossover, consisting of a variable hpf for one cannel and variable lpf for the other. Now if I could just change one component inside and make the variable hpf start at 40hz instead of 100hz, I would have a perfect hpf build in for rumble and feedback etc purposes. Well I guess I will have to do without....
 

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