In absentia, Dodd Audio showed some great-looking red-lacquered monoblocks in the GR Research room. Their front-mounted attenuators clearly suggested that they can be used as single-input integrateds though they were opened fully to bypass for the matching preamplifier. I obtained the phone number 972-276-6765 for their designer and encourage interested readers to get the low-down on this very handsome gear, directly from Monsieur Dodd.

Bruce Edgar of Edgarhorn fame showed with Cyrus Brenneman Audio [818-349-5402]. Together, they featured a number of newsworthy components. Most colossal? The 35Hz Horn Seismic Sub which labored under the very forgivable misconception of being the only device to provide horn loading to 35Hz. It's augmented down low by a Hsu crossover amp that's EQd to 20Hz. This 35Hz extension likely was a horny exclusive until the mad man from Germany launched his Avantgarde Acoustic BASSHORN. Nevertheless, at $1,000 in unfinished MD, $1,200 in unfinished Russian ply and $3,500 spruced up in true furniture-quality finish, Bruce Edgar's refrigerator-sized invention is way more affordable. Driven by a JBL 2240 18-inch pro woofer in a hyperbolic horn and measuring 72" x 31" x 28" HxWxD, the only painful part of this bass contraption is its weight: 400 lbs in MDF, 250 lbs in plywood.


Playing the higher registers was a Vintage Titan Horn System [$7,450 direct] that loads a JBL 2441 Alnico compression driver into a round Tractrix horn of Mr. Edgar's design, while a 12-inch JBL Alnico woofer feeds the visible horn from 50 to 10,000Hz.
A super tweeter extends treble response above 10kHz while a benign 8-ohm impedance and 107dB sensitivity interface well with even the most flea-powered of amplifiers. Weight is 150 lbs and dimensions are 56" x 23" x 23" HxWxD. Not shown but available is a $1,700/pr Slimline Horn System whose shape recalls Von Schweikert's VR-4 and is described as an improvement over the firm's earlier System 80 design. This 3-way design uses a 6-inch low-mass driver in a folded hyperbolic horn for response to 80Hz. A Tractrix midrange horn and vertically aligned horn tweeter add to the picture, with 95 lbs of mass and dimensions of 51" x 14.5" x 21" HxWxD completing it. Various plywood rectangular Tractrix midrange horns and lathe-turned American Poplar round Tractrix horns (as seen above on the Vintage Titan) round out the DIY offerings of Edgarhorn, with pricing not exceeding $450 ea. for even the most ambitious of raw parts.

The Cyrus Brenneman Audio Cavalier [upper right] is a $2,695 designer-direct stereo SET with 10 watts of Class A power derived from EL34 output tubes which are driven from 6BM8s and rectified by a GZ37/5U4. The finish -- a very attractive chrome-plated steel chassis with gold accents on the Electra-Print transformer covers -- recalled the celebrated cosmetics of Art Audio. The firm also sells the Stereo Thirty with paralleled EL-84s for 15wpc of output power, using 6U8s for inputs and one 5V4/5AR4 rectifier. The $6,500/pr flagship Bel Air is a 50-watt EL-34 push-pull monoblock with a 6SN7 input/phase inverter, 6BX7 driver, and one CV378 rectifier for each of the two EL-34 outputs. The final member of the Brenneman family is the $1,200 Request Line Stage. It offers 3 inputs and a tube complement of one 6X5, two 12GN7s and either twin 6S4As for standard gain or two 6C19P1s for low gain.
Retailer John Tucker of Exemplar Audio in Everett/WA showed a rare Luxman DU-10 CD player (one of only three in the country) without letting on that he's also the designer of the Exception preamp [$4,500] which combines a direct-coupled, all triode signal path with 5965 shunt regulator and 5670s (or optional WE 396A or 2C51 plug-ins) plus MagneQuest nickel parafeed outputs, innovative control circuitry and a solid-state power supply.

The $8,500/pr Exultation 300Bmonos sport an actively loaded, shunt regulated driver stage and actively loaded output stage with MagneQuest nickel parafeed outputs, 6N1P driver, 5965 shunt regulator, and TJ mesh plate 300B.

The 103dB Exemplar horns [$10,500/pr veneered, $7,350/pr black] use Great Plains Audio built Altex 515AG 15-inch woofers and 909-8A 1-inch compression tweeters for a horn-loaded bandwith of 135Hz - 22kHz below which bass reflex loading extends response to 37Hz.
Jeffrey Jackson of Experience Music and Jon VerHalen of Lowther America showed Jeffrey's $9,500/pr Devotion 6-watt integrated mono amps that use a choke-input, shunt-feed, directly heated triode output stage and shunt-regulated, shunt-feed, triode driver stage with Stevens & Billington input and coupling transformers and Magnequest plate chokes and cobalt output trannies.

With a perforated-plate Tianjan 300B, the Devotion's input driver is a 5C45P and the rectifier a GZ34/5AR4, with twin ob2s for shunt regulation. I couldn't obtain data on the passive-display amplifier above which bore more than a slight family resemblance to the Devotions, albeit without the Mayan pyramid scheme. The Lowther Mini-Medallion aka Mini-Me uses the DX55 driver and was shown in pre-production form. The larger show speaker was based on Martin King's Quarter Wave research and clad in quarter-sawn Cherry veneers and solid hardwood trim, with a 1.25" thick plywood baffle and .75" ply panels. Actual production boxes for DIYers will use veneer over 0.75" MDF. This King Quarter Wave model can reproduce bass to 40Hz but then necessitates a special EQ network that reduces operating sensitivity to 91dB. During the exhibit, this circuit was placed into the amp to run the drivers at their customary 97dB rating. Lowther America will gladly share this network with anyone buying their drivers. Those sell at $1,700 for the DX4, $795 for the DX3, $1,800 for the EX4, $895 for the EX3 and $1,250 for the PM2A.