Here is a possibly a better picture of it. The base is walnut, the tube are the Chinese 300B that we found sounds great and the interconnects feeding the amp directly from the DAC are in development. Since with this amp we can eliminate the needed sonic benefits of a preamp it lends itself to super transparency and a single interconnect. That's a good reason to see what is left to hear with an all out cable design. The red copper transformer covers match the exotic binding posts on this amplifier. Unlike the binding posts the covers offer no sonic benefit, only looks and slightly lower operating temps due to reflecting the infra red heat from the output tubes.
Like all of our larger dimensioned amplifiers we are using 1/8" steel plates with powder coated finish in a high mass solid hardwood base. Our original Zen Triode amplifier model SE84C is as thick of steel as you can comfortably bend into a six sided amplifier chassis. You can't bend 1/8 inch steel plate into a chassis because it's too thick. To really compliment this kind of stiff mass the solid hardwood base reaches a full 1-1/2" thickness which is twice as thick as our other base designs.
When you're going to the trouble to point-to-point wire an amplifier featuring such a great output tube the resulting opportunity to hear additional clarity from vibration control presents itself and we want to hear it.
It's really about seeing how deep we can crawl into the music with 4K vision so all of these little things add some weight to that scale. I am presently listening to this amplifier exactly as pictured with less than 40 hours on it and it has melted my face off more than once ; )
Like I often do, tonight I find myself listening to the amp through my house speakers which have the most insane resolution of any speaker I have spent any time with in the past 30 years. The only thing that came close is the Acoustats and those were even better in some ways but worse in others and overall this is far better due to the superior amplification possible. Anyway, these speakers are like the James Web telescope and this amp loves that because it lets you really hear how good the amp is, the insane balance and density and imaging and scale are all in a new league because of the amps ability to drive these 88dB speakers to a usable and encapsulating level. Sadly the UFO25 isn't enough juice for this kind of speaker.
And let's not forget the thing about how the pretty and extra thick copper makes it seem to sound better just like how your car always seems to have more power and run better after it's been freshly washed and waxed!
Everything counts.