Quality Controlling another 25th Anniversary Zen Triode amplifier today and thinking about all the hours I spent at the bench 25 years ago where it all started.  Shown above, it was a cardboard covered steel bench on my back porch with little heat and no air.  It leaned like it was going to slide off the house.

At the time Decware was well on it's way as an online entity building custom cone kits for obsolete speakers and then doing the repairs.  (No we don't do it anymore, sorry)  It was a great way to learn about speakers... I mean it's one thing to read the brochures and see speakers at the store, but entirely more enlightening to take them completely apart, and repair them.  I got to see what was really going on inside tens of dozens of different manufactures speakers, knowledge that turned out to be valuable when designing amplifiers to deal with what I saw.

The picture above is extremely rare.  Pre-dates digital cameras and the scan and original prints are long gone.  I found this tiny thumbnail and blew it up so we could see it.  It is a picture of the first twelve Zen Triode amplifiers ever sold, under construction on my bench.

I was hand-drilling all the holes in each amplifier.  The chassis were aluminum.  I swirl-brushed each chassis by hand too.  This is when I leaned it's not a good idea to build more than one amp at a time, and especially not twelve amps at a time!  I made 14 mistakes on amp no#1 and then repeated all 14 mistakes on the remaining 11 amps!  Of course it was timely to correct.

I have yet to ever see a single one of these come back for repair, mods, or any other reason.  I just simply have never seen any of them : )

Anyway, when I think about the original Zen Amp, the picture in my mind is my spot at this bench with no less than 110 woofers hanging from the ceiling above my head and talking to the Audio Gods.  I'm just happy to have at least one photo of that time : )

This picture was obviously something I put on the web site at the time, and to give some of you an idea how long ago that was, computer monitors had a 640 x 480 display and weighed about 40 lbs.

Steve

This is so far the only other picture of the back porch where I started Decware as you know it.



This analog frequency generator / recorder can sweep from 20Hz to 20kHz in a single smooth sweep with no multipliers and is of course all tube.  With it I would listen to every speaker repair and because of it, I was able to hear things about the speaker that you would never find with a computer.

Steve


NOTE:  Picture is of my woofer test bench.  After reconing each speaker and sweeping it for a response test, I would then use this test box to measure the Theil & Small parameters of the drivers to find out how close they were to factory specifications. The rather giant size box (bench) is used to find out the VAS parameter.

This process is also is very handy for building speakers since you know the actual parameters of each driver vs. the never accurate published specs.

It really does give me some very vivid flashbacks... indeed!  I'm standing here looking at the masterpiece that came 25 years later and if there were somehow a way to go back in time and show myself what it would become... I wouldn't have been able to understand how it could be.

When I made the decision to try to sell the Zen Triode Amplifier, once I realized how good it actually was, my goal was to make and sell 25 amps.  For someone who was at the time penny-less, it was a really ballsy goal.  With everything I could sell and scrape together, I decided to build the first 12 amps without having any of them sold.

It is such a trip to look back to those early years and now... I couldn't have imagined it in my wildest dreams.  I couldn't be happier with the amps success and the ultimate prize which was to be able to share something so dear with all of you!  

The fact that we've all gotten to this point is testament to the magic of the amplifier, a tutorial given to me by the Audio Gods.  I can see now why they picked me over an educated engineer... it's because I appreciated and marveled at the idea rather than second guessed it, or simply dismissed it because I thought I was already too smart and could make something better.

I can remember in the earliest of days when I was teaching myself as I go, using meditation to pick the best part from several options because I was too green to know from experience which would be best.  Then I spent months afterwards trying all the other combinations anyway just to see what would have happened....  I think they appreciated the skepticism because Audio Gods have better things to do than program lemmings.

Perhaps I'll find out someday the Audio Gods were always just my higher self trying to cut through the fog... until then I really won't take credit.  The creative force in all of us is not ours to claim or to own.  

This whole flashback post was originally going to go into the 25th Anniversary Zen Triode thread, but buried in that monster how many would ever see it?  

Happy listening... and happy holidays!

Steve

Steve, I'm so glad you made more than 25, because I bought #27! Then had it upgraded to Rev. A, then bought a Select, and it's been an audio education then and ever since, and a journey to audio joy.