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Considering that tube amps rely so very disproportionally on the quality of their transformers (power, output, interstage, choke), it's outright shocking just how few amplifier makers actually wind their own transformers. Well, Trafomatic is one of those few. On Misha's countryside property, Trafomatic is finishing off a building which already houses transformer core production and a spray-paint area for chassis parts. Once the middle floor is done, amplifier manufacture will migrate from the back of Sasa's home to here.

While the basic machine above is commercial, it benefits from mechanical add-ons by Misha and electronic controls circuits by Sasa. I deliberately took the photo of the snaking loops of steel banding on the floor to convey the lengths of raw material that go into transformer cores.

Other machines handle vacuum extraction, core baking, band cutting and various other stages of production.

For the cutting of the cores, Trafomatic employs a neat -- and expensive -- trick which results in far cleaner non-frayed edges than common solutions enable.

Here we see high-gloss transformer cans (the Reference monos use copper for shielding underneath); and a very attractive new glossy wood chassis for the monos which will be mated to black transformers and top plates.

Meanwhile back in Sasa's digs, I caught Goran Blazic (winding master for output transformers) and Andreja Vicovac and Aleksandar Tomic who wind the toroids [left to right]. The Trafomatic annex to the home has the office of  Sasa and Misha on the top floor. This includes one station for amplifier manufacture. Audio transformer winding occurs one floor below. Industrial transformers are fabricated in yet another location.

Here is the domain where these three gents labor away.

Some of the winding equipment is vintage Swiss and German.

Trafomatic also has its own commercial van.

Trafomatic sources its water-jet cutting from Europe's largest shop whose owner happens to be a close friend of Sasa's and works in Mladenovac. We'll visit him on a subsequent page. Here we see the raw and then painted top plate for a Head One headphone amplifier and (lower right above) the raw top plate of the prototype WLM integrated. Next are a few pix from Trafomatic's wood shop.

Here a Head One enclosure gets put together.

Prep sanding for painting.

Panel mitering on a table saw.