On Sunday, January 12, 2014 at 12:52:54 PM UTC-7, hugeshows wrote:
Hello all,
One of my favorite tube amps has to be the Sherwood S-5000. It's a little gem of an integrated amp that is quite easily underestimated. Most people would put it in the same class as a Scott 299, also a 6BQ5 amp, although the Sherwood is really a 7189
amp, and actually uses the higher plate voltage possible with the 7189. It also has larger output transformers, and manages to put out 24w RMS per channel.
The pre-amp section, despite having dated ideas about tone control and Fletcher-Munson curves (thankfully switchable) maintains a very neutral and open sound. The bass and treble knobs are actually usable and helpful at times, and don't have some
insane Q that belies their center frequency. The phono section is startlingly good so long as the original Telefunken 12AX7s are occupying the two sockets in the phono section. There are a handful of other tubes that can work there as well, but
filament hum and microphonics plague any U.S. made 12AX7 or 7025 I have ever tried in this amp, shield or no.
The use of 7199 tubes as the phase splitter/driver tubes is somewhat unfortunate since they are hard to obtain these days. The upshot is that they seem to last a very long time in this circuit, and they sound quite good. Some have attempted to use
6GH8A in this position, or modern Russian 7199 that are actually re-pinned 6GH8A, and I would strongly discourage that. They don't sound right at all. Just ask the ST-70 crowd. You'd have to modify the circuit, and I think that in this case, that's
just daft. The 7199 last too long and sound too good to make that a useful mod, IMHO.
In this thread, I will be going over the basic steps of reviving a Sherwood S-5000 as I rebuild yet another one of these beauties. This is more or less your standard re-cap job, plus replacing the selenium rectifier in the bias supply. There are
however some things that are specific to this amp, little tricks for dealing with the tight chassis space, and other stuff too. The way capacitors are mounted in this amp is a real pain. It uses twist-lock can caps, one of which is mounted at a 35
degree angle.
If -YOU- have an S-5000 or S-4400 and you have any questions about it, please feel free to ask away and I will cover the topic in this thread. I've dealt with just about everything there is do deal with on these amps, as this will be the 6th one I've
restored. The S-5000II is a totally different beast using 7591s, and I will not be covering that amp here.
Still trying to figure out where I will post pics and schematics so I can post links here, so give me a little while on that.
For those of you exclusively into DIY, the S-5000 circuit is a very cool and sweet sounding 7189 amp. It's the only amp I've seen that gets 24 watts out of a pair of 7189s. I've made one using the Triode Electronics ST-70 board as a front-end and the
result was so good that it sold for $1000 despite being a prototype and not terribly well built. It was in a Hammond box as I recall, but I did engine turn the top at least. So we can also discuss DIY around this circuit in this thread if anyone wants.
This is my favorite vintage amp of all time, so I can talk about it endlessly without getting bored.
Feel free to ask away as I prepare some pics and schematics to get this started.
-forkinthesocket
Would you consider doing a restoration to my S 5000 ? Please call me at 406-461-8700
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