Owner`s manual

MOVING RIGHT ALONG...
NOW THAT YOU HAVE ALL YOUR CABLES PLUGGED IN, you may now connect the IEC power cord to the Snapper and to
an energized power outlet.
(Unless you live in California and are in the middle of a Rolling Greyout®™.) Fire up all your upstream devices
first: sources, preamplifier, and such and allow them all to finish their turn-on cycles so your Snapper will not be amplifying any of
their waking-up noises.
Once they are stabilized, you may now switch ON your Snappers. The mains power switch is located on the back of the chassis right at
the IEC power inlet. You shouldn't need to turn the Snapper around or get yourself behind it. You should be able to "feel" the rocker
switch located next to the AC power cord. (We stuck the power switch way back there to keep the noisy mains furthest away from the
input circuitry.) Flip the switch away from the power cord to turn on the Snapper or towards the power cord to turn off the unit.
Your Snappers feature a SOFT-START system designed to smooth out electrical peaks and surges at power-up. Turning on the power
switch starts an approximately 30 second warm-up sequence that softly starts the amplifier. The control grids of the output tubes are
held at full negative bias until the input and driver stage wake-up transients have subsided. The badge lamps will blink during the
warm-up sequence, and the amp's inputs are held in mute condition to cut any signal drive until all stages are ready.
When the warm-up interval timer lapses, the badge lamps will revert to a steady state of illumination, and the input mute will be
released. Be careful not to hit the inputs with high-level line signals during the mute interval, or you may be blasted by sound when the
mute is released.
*Notice that the warm-up sequence will be re-asserted if the AC power is cut for more than a few seconds.*
Sometimes you might see a flash out of the little input tube's heater as it turns on. Tube heater filaments conduct a lot more current
when they're cold (room temperature), so they glow a little brighter when they're fist turned on, until they reach normal operating
temperature. Every incandescent light bulb tungsten filament does that too. That's normal so don't worry about it. I told you, you stop
worrying about it!
STOP WORRYING ABOUT EVERYTHING AND JUST GET LISTENING! Once audio is first heard from the Snappers, please
notice that it takes about 45 minutes of warm-up time for the system to reach thermal equilibrium. During this warm up time, go walk
your dog, make dinner, or play some lite pop music. Paul Anka would be a fun choice. Or even Tom Jones. Well, what you listen to is
up to you.
POWER DOWN (What? So soon?) (No silly, when you're done, unless you just wanna practice!) As a rule, power up your amplifiers
last, power down them first so they do not amplify any stray noises which could occur upstream from source components powering up
or down. Additionally, it is best to cut power to the Snapper when not in use rather then leaving the power on indefinitely. This will
enhance tube and system life. The tubes should last thousands of hours under normal conditions. Especially if you check your BIAS
every once in awhile. Keep reading to learn more about tubes and then on page 8 you can learn about biasing your Snappers.
WHAT'S HE DO? AND HOW? CIRCUIT FEATURES: The SNAPPER amplifier’s signal path features floating self-balancing
input and driver circuits, capable of handling unbalanced RCA, or higher level balanced XLR type signals. When presented with an
unbalanced source, the input stage is designed to produce a complimentary push-pull signal whose balance accuracy is within a few
percent of perfect. The following driver stage features the same self-balancing characteristic, at a higher power level. This results in
well-honed signal balance whose accuracy is independent of input signal symmetry, and limited only by the matching accuracy of the
driver [7044] tube’s total plate load.
Ordinarily, only a carefully matched inter-stage transformer would be capable of this level of balance, but that approach would
necessarily be burdened with comparatively severe bandwidth and phase limitations. Recent electronic component developments grant
options to us not available to previous generations of designers and permit economical and very noticeably laudable circuit
embellishments while maintaining sonic isolation from the signal path. The Ultra-Linear (sorry, we're not boasting: Ultra-Linear "UL"
is an output stage topology referring to how the screen grids are hooked up to the special UL taps on the output tranny's primaries)
output stage properties include an output transformer whose secondary winding is balanced, with grounded center-tap. The signal
appears at the two outside taps of the output transformer, which are made available at the two speaker-output binding posts. Balanced
global negative feedback signals are sampled from these outputs, and are routed back to the input stage. The entire circuit, including the
output transformer and some loudspeaker back-EMF, is thus included in the feedback loop(s) all 9dB's of it, which ain't that much
actually compared to some amplifiers we could mention.
TUBE TAWK: As with all tubes, certain parameters degrade with age. This is due to decreasing cathode emission, a natural process
found in all tubes. There are just so many electrons on that cathode and one day, they will have all jumped off. An excessive increase in
noise level or very unstable output tube bias can indicate the need to replace a tube. The electrolytic capacitors will probably eventually
dry out or start leaking and need to be replaced. Maybe in 15 to 20 or 30 years you will need to do this but don't worry about this for
now... didn't I tell you to stop worrying? But I do worry: How long will these tubes last? We can’t say for sure. Nowadays, as in
years past, bad tubes do emerge from the manufacturer’s assembly lines. Some small signal and power output tubes die prematurely
while others, especially small ones like the 12AX7, AU, AT and so on can last for more than 30 years of continuous use! The chief
determinants of tube life expectancy are the stringency of the particular application, and the initial build quality of the tube itself. The
average for the tubes in the SNAPPER should to be around 2000+ hours for the output tubes, hey, maybe lots more, depending on
usage, more for the input and driver tubes. We've seen 60,000+ hours on a set of tubes, but we're not trying to get your hopes up as it is
better for the life on your tubes to exceed what we tell you they will do so you will feel better when they do and be all surprised.
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