I found a single Cornwall I on CL for cheap, so that I might audition it. It has a great reputation. Brought it home and instantly fell madly in love. I had to either find another one or a pair.
Yesterday I brought home a minty pair of Cornwall III, three years old, finished in walnut. I'm pretty happy. They are currently powered by a Dynaco ST-70 power amp (35 WPC using EL34 power tubes). For scale, the woofers are 15".
All this is really in preparation for a build I am planning to make a DHT preamp using the 300B tube, and a "single-ended triode" power amp also using the 300B tube. SET amps are said to be breathtaking in their sound. Some of you will know that SET amps are typically flea-watt amps. The one I will build makes 8-9 WPC. Cornwalls are HIGHLY efficient and will be plenty loud with this amp. Cornwall sensitivity is 102db. This means that with 1 Watt of power, they are about as loud as standing next to a lawn mower. This is a pair of them, which means 1 Watt will be as loud as standing next to two lawn mowers.
One final message for the stereophiles here: I made a HUGE improvement in my system a few months ago by doing something very simple. I removed the preamp from the signal path. Granted, this was a tube preamp with components like capacitors certainly WAY out of spec, and getting rid of the preamp means I have essentially no tone controls. But the improvement in sound fidelity was striking. Right now, I have my sources going to a Schiit SYS, which is a just a volume pot and a switch allowing selection between two sources. The SYS is directly connected to the Dynaco.
