Woo Wes or BHSE
May 7, 2018 at 1:21 AM Post #154 of 161
The 3ES is still not being shipped yet right? Woo site lists it as will be shipped in June 2018.
I don't think the Woo bashing thing is appropriate, since each manufacturers cater to different market. Lacking opportunity to audition all the available top electrostatic amp available, people will based their buying options on whatever information that they find most appealing. We have to admit that the newly launched Woo website is much more attractive than Headamp website.
Visually, 3ES is also more attractive than the Hawaii. And lets not go to the DIY amp such T2s or Carbons. As good as they sound, for a high thousand dollars amp they are ugly. Also if you're ready to pay this much money for an amp, you don't exactly want it to look like other people's amp. As scarce as Hawaii is in real world, in Head-fi realm it could be considered a mainstream electrostat amp. I'd like to take the 3ES as a call to the DIY amp builders to upgrade the visual part of their amp.
 
May 7, 2018 at 12:36 PM Post #155 of 161
Well, of course aesthetics is subjective, but having seen both in person, I'm not convinced that Woo's tubes sticking out of a box is any more attractive than Blue Hawaii's tubes sticking out of a box. Nor am I convinced by the argument that someone paying for an expensive box wants it to look different than other people's expensive box. That seems rather superficial to me.

As to Woo bashing, the original GES used output plate resistors, and was a decent amp for the price, based on a Kevin Gilmore design. The WES used output choke loading, which is a curious choice for electrostatic amps, since electrostatic headphones are extremely high impedance at low frequencies, just where chokes have their lowest impedance, resulting in poor power transfer, particularly since 50% of the power spectrum in music lies below 300-500 Hz. Reviews of its subjective qualities have been mixed. Given the record, I don't think that skepticism of a new design is unwarranted.

AFAIK, the only other choices for output loading are constant current sources or output transformers, which is anything but "proprietary" technology. With constant current sources, the available amount of gain using two 6SN7 voltage gain tubes and two 300B output tubes is borderline even without the use of overall negative feedback, raising questions of gain stability. Now, a low winding ratio output transformer, e.g. 1:2, would not be unreasonable, trading off some of the relatively low voltage limits of the 300B output tube for the higher than needed quiescent current that is optimal for a 300B tube.

Finally, Woo has been notoriously sloppy about specifying appropriate value bias supply output resistors in the past, a simple but telling indication of caring about proper design. It costs nothing extra to use a 5 megohm bias resistor for Stax and a 10 megohm bias resistor for Sennheiser stat headphones.
 
May 7, 2018 at 5:58 PM Post #158 of 161
Nobody can seriously think the 3ES looks better than Justin's BHSE...right?

We have been here before with this so many times. It is best to ask, where are the owners of the WES, and where are the glowing reviews?
 
May 16, 2022 at 1:15 AM Post #161 of 161
Leo,

HeadphoneAddict has heard both and posted his comments on The Stax thread (New) in the High-end Audio Forum. He does a good job of describing the particular aspects of each and comparing and contrasting each.

I am a big fan of Woo (I have a GES) and once funds permit, I plan on buying the WES.

Good luck.
I prefer Ges to Wes both are inferior to BHSE to quite a large margin though
 

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