Steve Deckert
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The Two power supplies in the SE34I.2 were heavy overkill. Remember those were designed for the original SE34I that had four output tubes rather than two.
Right now, we're still at the same 40 mills per tube as before, so both channels draw 80 mills. The current power supply is 150 mills.
So to answer your question, no, it is no longer dual mono.
I'm in the final chapter of the voicing on it, and comparing lucid mode with one built as a classic SET just like our Zen Amp (SE84C+). It's looking like getting lucid mode as good as it was on the Taboo may take another year or even two (like it did for the Taboo). Triode vs. Pentode is just too much change to have the same results. Don't get me wrong, it's impressive in it's current state, but in a serious shoot out between the two designs, The classic Decware SET may actually have the edge in the imaging department since it's more accurately rendering the intent of the recordings. Given that and the fact that the amp could now be bridged mono I'm likely going to abandon the unbridgeable lucid mode on this design. After all, we still make the Taboo.
The meters are to show the bias of each output tube. This lets you know a few things:
1) When the amp is ready to play music after powering on.
2) What the bias is for each tube
3) If the tubes match and if not, and how far off are they
4) Visual clipping indicator to make it easy to determine max power levels
5) Ongoing tube wear indicators
6) Tube failure (shorted) indicator
But mainly to let you see at a glance how close your tubes are matching and how close your amp is to max power.
...no the tubes do not have to match, especially if you have the amp configured with dual volume controls... but matched tubes mean that each channel will clip at the same point - not one side sooner than the other... and closely matched tubes preserve pristine imaging.
Steve
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