After 4 months of waiting, I have finally managed to find a fully restored Radio craftmen C500a amplifiers to accompany my 12.1, MC240 & WE KS16604.
Some backbround information on the RC500 from Alan (Pilotrol) at R33 net:
Radio Craftsman founded by John Cashman in47. John Cashman worked in Hallicrafters Radio Company before he founded Radio Craftsman. Radio Craftsman was mainly focusing on development of home audio and television from late 40 to late 50's.
Ed Miller and Sid Smith were two major engineers to work for Radio Craftsman during early 40's - mid 50's. Actually, Ed Miller is the founder of Sherwood and who leave Radio Craftsman before 1953 (This year he founded Sherwood and mainly focused on integrate amp and receiver). Sid Smith later left Radio Craftsman and joined Marantz as chief engineer in 1954.
The major audio products from Radio Craftsman actually was not completely developed by Radio Craftsman, but mainly licensed by RCA and Western Electric!
Most of the Radio Craftsman gear sound fast, clear and very transparent with fine body (thin but not thick and mellow body).No question that the most popular Radio Craftsman amp in the family must be the C500 series.
The first two generations of C500 was mostly worked by Sid Smith and licensed by Western Electric. The first generation C500 was introduced in 1951, it comes with a smooth corner Stancor output transformer. In 1952, smooth corner version replaced by the sharp corner version output. Radio Craftsman C500 is based on Williamson design which operated with 2 x KT66 output tube in triode but pure class A operation with 10 watt output. It has very natural sweet, clear and transparent tone. However, it has very clear, natural, realistic and transparent tone than many vintage and modern hi-fi amp.
The Radio Craftsman C500 was replaced by C500A in 1953 and the same years Sid Smith left Radio Craftsman. I believe the Radio C500A is the final work of Sid Smith. The different between Radio Craftsman C500A is it has much higher plate voltage in triode class AB and the output increase to 15 watts per channel. It also has much large size choke than C500, it also licensed by Western Electric as well. The rectifier tube also changed to 5U4G instead of 5V4G.
The final version is Radio Craftsman C550 and it replaced Radio Craftsman C500A in 1954. Honestly, the sound of Radio Craftsman C550 sounds slightly different than C500 and C550A, it has better body but not as transparent sweet and natural than C500 and C500A. The reason is simple, the C550 is operated in Ultra-linear instead of triode operation, the output also increase to 30 watt instead of 15 watts. The amplifier also used a B+ delayed turn-on via a slow warm-up, it required 60 seconds to preserve the cathodes on the KT-66s. FYI, Radio Craftsman C550 was not designed by Sid Smith, but actually designed by Bob Grodinski, this guy took over Sid smith work as Smith already left the company and joined Marantz in summer of 1954...!
Even though, my intention is not to "collect" vintage tube amplifiers for the sake of collecting, I have subsconsciously been poisoned by the music reproduction from these KT66 amps.
Out of the 5 amplifiers mentioned, I have managed to find 3 & 1/2 namely:
1. Leak12.1
2. Radio craften C500
3. Mcintosh MC240
4. WE KS16608 (the model after the highly priced WE 124) -- just joking! : )
Hopefully, I can find the WE 124 to replace the WE KS16608 soon!
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