October 2001

Dear Friends

Welcome to the Joule Electra website. Many of you have heard about our two moves (yes 2) during the past 18 months so we thought you might like to see what our new home looks like in the Sunny South. The first picture at the right shows our new manufacturing building. This is a big step up from the basement at the old place and the storeroom at the rent house a couple of years ago.

The next picture was taken on January 27, 2000 and shows that while it may be sunny it also can snow big time here in South Carolina. The manufacturing building is located just to the left of the house and there is considerable room for expansion.

The music room is next and we usually have a pair of Marquis OTL amps coupled to an LAP line/phono stage and Gyrodeck using the Cardas Heart cartridge. A pair of red Stargate amplifiers are also visible in this picture. Two speaker systems are used for component evaluation. The Merlin VSM speakers are just barely visible on the side and a pair of Duntech Princesses are currently in the system. The cabinets are solid maple (a la Home Depot) and the top is a two-inch thick maple butcher block. We were amazed how much better the system sounded after we made this significant investment in maple.

The picture at the bottom is Marianne at work in the office and is carefully framed so as to not show some of the mess that seems to be prevalent most of the time. Most of the mess in on my desk, not hers.

As many of you know, we have been working for some time to develop a new line stage. The LA-100 is still very popular in its Mark III iteration, but many people have wanted to step up with a new Joule preamplifier. Well,you will be interested to know that we have finally created a new line stage that we think is a worthy upgrade to the 100. It uses two new a fabulous tubes form Russia and I have summarized some of the characteristics of this new preamp in the following paragraphs.

The basic topology of the LA-100 is retained while the signal board has been revised to accept the new tubes and the power supply has been beefed up to supply the higher current. Otherwise the specs are the same as the LA-100 given in the products section. The gain tubes are Russian 6C45Pi single rather than dual triodes that have fantastic characteristics. Each triode is equivalent to ten 12AX7's (20 triodes) in the same envelope and can operate at currents as high as 40 milliamps per envelope. The Mu follower tube is the new Russian 6H30Pi which has received good press lately. The sound of the new preamp is similar to the LA-100 in all respects while being much more dynamic and detailed with no harshness at all, just like the LA-100.

The really fantastic thing about the 150 is that the primary output is a plate follower, not the Mu follower section of the circuit. The result is only one vacuum tube element being in the signal path. This provides all the sonic benefits of a plate follower, but the output impedance of the preamp is a low 400 ohms. This remarkable achievement has heretofore been obtainable only with 6DJ8's or low Mu triodes and these tubes have never had the sonic splendor of a good 12AX7. The Mu follower output with an impedance of 50 ohms is available from the Mu follower to drive difficult impedances without any effect on the sonics of the plate follower.

We will be able to upgrade the older Mark III preamps to the 150 at a modest cost. This will include the three new tubes involved, a highly modified signal board, and power supply modifications. This will be a full upgrade and the units will then be given new serial numbers to confirm this.

We also have an upcoming upgrade for the OPS series of phono stages but more about this later this fall.

Yours truly,

Jud and Marianne Barber