Don Sachs Kootenay KT88 Amp

I know this amp uses the Roy's board, but has lots of mods. I was wondering if anyone has experience of this amp vs a VTA120. Thanks in advance!

I cannot speak from any experience regarding Don's KT88 amp, but I purchased his preamp over a year ago with zero issues. Don only uses premium parts in his builds and the result is beautiful sounding equipment. I am responding here just to say that you can trust that Don will sell you a quality amp and back up his product with a warranty. You will get better quality parts and sound from his build than purchasing almost any major brand. It is great that Roy and Bob sell amp kits so that we/anyone can build these amps any way to our choosing, but if you like and trust their designs and products but would just prefer to upgrade with some premium tubes, caps, resistors and wiring, you can save a few $ by building yourself or save a lot of time and trust that Don will assemble everything with reasonable labor costs. I have no problem saying that anyone purchasing one of Don's products will be at minimum satisfied with their amp and should have no fear that they are making any mistake with their purchase. At best you will join the many customers of Don that use and love their audio equipment that they purchased from Don.

Good luck with your decision... Mike

Thanks, for your response. I would still really love to hear someone's opinion of the Don's vs the a VTA 120 or pair of M-125's. Obviously, pricing on Don's is almost triple a VTA 120, so I would just love to hear the thoughts of someone who has heard both...if that person exists I would even be OK hearing someone's assessment on the design differences between the 2.

We had someone who had one of those apps but unfortunately he’s passed on.
He had some problems with the auto bias board, after losing a set of tubes worth $1200, Then having another set of tubes taken out he got rid of the Kooteney and went directly to Holger and picked up a couple of his mono blocks I think.

I have Don preamp and love it.

PM me for more details.

Aguaazul

B&W,
Don and I work together on alot of projects as he buys his boards from me.
The Kootenay amp is based on the original ST120, I sold one to Don many years ago with my own octal driver board, and he liked it alot,
but found that the bass rolled off quite a bit below 50Hz. (very few speakers go much lower than 40Hz so most people couldn't even tell).
He was extremely happy with the driver board, and so he sourced some extremely high quality and expensive toroidal transformers from Europe
to replace the originals. That got bass flat down to below 20Hz, and opened up the top end transparency even more.
After that he added even better capacitors and resistors, and then added B+ regulation (which is also expensive and burns up alot of heat).
Finally the past two years he added auto-bias. Easily an extra $1200 worth of parts. I sell a similar amp without the auto-bias and B+ regulation,
but a lower powered 40wpc version which is plenty of power for 90% of customers.
Roy www.Tubes4HiFi.com/custom.htm

Very happy with my VTA ST-70 now for 8 years. Went with premium components after talking with Bob and also upgraded to Mundorf SGO capacitors from other recommendations. Also went with KT-66's after deliberating for quite some time. Could not be happier and the build was fun and educational. Have built two others for friends who wanted one after hearing my system. For the price tag, cannot be beat. I have often considered moving up to the 120 but if volume is a requirement at times, 2 o'clock on the preamp is satisfactory with more headroom for dynamics of a recording. If I had the resources I sure would try Don's amp to compare but in my set-up I have auditioned McIntosh, Krell, Joplin 2A3 and my Transcendent OTL (EL-509 output) and my VTA proves to be the best to my ears.