Josh Stippich and Dave Adams of Electron Luv won the bigger-is-better thermionic award by more inches than the most obnoxious of studly bedroom braggarts would care to admit! As our prior interview with Josh recounted, his arena is that of the one-up artwork commission. Truly dedicated music lovers and bottle mavens get to specify the rarest of tubes and rough cosmetic outlines. Then the endless enthusiasm and creativity of young Josh translates them into curvaceous Flash Gordon-esque amplifiers and preamps of truly unique appearances: Here, a direct-coupled 75TL driving a GM-100 for 15 watts of SE power, with 354 and 866 mercury-vapor rectifiers. Though this pair won't be for sale, two commissions in a similar chassis (and clocking in at $50-60K) are already in the works...

The horn speakers use a transmission-line loaded Scanspeak woofer below 40Hz, a Fostex 208 between 40-400Hz, a JBL 2440 from 400-2,000Hz and an ESG I Ribbon above 2kHz. The chassis is hand-formed from 18 gauge steel which is then filled with Porofoam [Josh to left, Dave Adams to right]. This was clearly the most outrageous, go-for-broke exhibit VSAC 2003 hosted. Most shocking of all? Josh had only fired up the amps once and for a bare 20 minutes before leaving Salt Lake City for the Pacific NorthWest. VSAC was a debut not just for us show goers but TubeMan himself. Solder slinging until late on Thursday night to banish some electron gremlins, the system made sounds on Friday but clearly lacked cohesion and focus. By Saturday, however, some late Friday tuning sessions and parts substitutions had transformed what until then was more of a visual extravaganza also into a sonic one that excelled with hard-driving, super-dynamic material.

In front of Josh's amps in the lower photos are the Nutshell High Fidelity Espressivo preamp/headphone and Amity power amp, joint ventures between Lynn Olsen, Gary Pimm, Gary Dahl and Josh. Though it sounds hard to believe, none of these pictures really do the Electron Luv exhibit justice. For viewing purposes, the glow-in-the-dark romance had to be artificially lightened in Photoshop to let you admire and appreciate constructional details. Still, the upper-most closeup of the massive output tube will give you an idea as to the light show that had room 354 lit up like a Christmas party. Way to go, Josh!