Eden Forum Disappears

[slagbass]

True on the Schematics, OEM parts, not so much.

I get what you and agedhorse are saying but I can't think of ANY consumer product where one would expect to have access to OEM parts 28 years after purchase. It certainly would never occur to me to expect that for a relatively niche product like a bass amp.

 

[agedhorse]

I get what you and agedhorse are saying but I can't think of ANY consumer product where one would expect to have access to OEM parts 28 years after purchase. It certainly would never occur to me to expect that for a relatively niche product like a bass amp.

That’s not true, many correct parts are available. The issue here is that the transistor package was discontinued by the manufacturer many years ago, it was a superior part, there are no equivalents, and pretty much everything out there is VERY inferior counterfeits. Many don’t work at all, some work for a short time until they fail.

Workarounds may be possible, but add to the cost of repair and many qualified techs won’t want to mess with it because they can get kind of married to the repair

 

[MuthaFunk]

Except for the parts that are no longer available… most Sanken output transistors on the market these days are fakes, knockoffs, counterfeits. It’s almost impossible to determine what’s real without radiographic analysis.

The same is becoming true of linear MOSFETS and some jFETs by the way.

100%.

Aside from the output transistors, and that single fault mode, all of the other parts would be readily available and most decent techs wouldn't have an issue.

I have read of one person online who toasted their output section. It can happen due to user error especially with the bridge mode and min 8 ohm load on the WT800A. Most of the issues that I've read on the WT800's are not at all related to the output transistors though. YMMV

 

[12bass]

I have read of one person online who toasted their output section. It can happen due to user error especially with the bridge mode and min 8 ohm load on the WT800A. Most of the issues that I've read on the WT800's are not at all related to the output transistors though. YMMV

Back in the 90s, I seem to recall David Nordschow calling them "arc welder transistors".

 

[agedhorse]

Back in the 90s, I seem to recall David Nordschow calling them "arc welder transistors".

A descriptive term completely unrelated to arc welders, or the inverters used in modern arc welders.

These were devices designed exclusively for the audio market.

 

[Mosthigh]

Now down to $650 cad or $470 usd. I could get a used Streamliner 900 for the same price, though.

 

[MuthaFunk]

Now down to $650 cad or $470 usd. I could get a used Streamliner 900 for the same price, though.

I’ve had both and both are really good at what they do. They are what I would consider VERY different amps though.

The Streamliner being a small light weight option that sacrifices nothing in the power department. The biggest difference however is the sound. I always ended up dialing in thicker warmer more tube feeling sounds with the Streamliner. At the time I was doing the same with my Mesa Walkabout combo so I let the Streamliner go. A little of that border line of tube breakup can be a sweet thing!

The Eden by comparison you’ll never get a satisfying breakup out of an Eden. They’re what I would characterize as very clean, precise sounding, and of course physically much heavier.

If you can’t play them in person, I’d suggest looking up the Streamliner demos on YouTube to get a rough idea of what they’re like. Supercool amps and very capable.

In my experience there is a bit more experimentation to be done with the Streamliner as it felt like the controls were all very interactive. You can get a lot of different sounds out of them but it takes a bit to get to know the amp.

 

[Rip Van Dan]

The Eden by comparison you’ll never get a satisfying breakup out of an Eden. They’re what I would characterize as very clean, precise sounding, and of course physically much heavier.

You are quite right on all the Eden gear up through the WT series. Extremely clean and clear and with the WT series also with that warmth in the sound. If you need distortion, you'll need to use a pedal with those. The tube in their preamp that gives it that warmth is in the impedance matching section operating only within parameters that produce that warmth. Tube warmth is actually produced by some distortion, but not in the since that musicians think of as overdrive, fuzz, or heavy distortion.

The last set of AB amps that Eden put out though can give you everything from just a little overdrive or break-up, all the way to really heavy distortion. That sound was in the World Tour Pro (WTP) series that Eden brought out while Marshall owned them. It actually had a second 12ax7 added to the gain section and you could dial up as little or as much "tube-effect" as you wanted. That was actually well done as you might imagine since the Marshall designers have a LOT of experience with distortion. Problem was their WTP-600 and WTP-900 were both heavy AB amps that they released right as everyone else was coming out with very capable class D amps at a fraction of the weight. So sales were not good and that's probably what drove Marshall to sell them to Gear4Music.com.

Eden was early in the game with their WTX class D amps and then late to the game with their TN (Terra Nova) class D amps, which in my opinion, were better than their WTX series. I have a TN-226 (225-watts rms into 4Ω) that I bought specifically to play small venues. It sounds every bit as warm, clear, and clean as my big WT500/800 class AB amp does, and has a much better auto-compressor on board. Good design but they never came out with an 800-watt version, which is where the market went.