March 2000

All The People Of Audio
Article By JJ Wyckoff
Note: Writer, sadly, passed away due to Hepatitis C
Note Article: In Memory of John Wyckoff

  I've always considered my tiny electronics workshop a private sanctuary. My place to be alone with my ideas and my tools. When I enter my shop, I’m ready to give my ideas form and follow the course which, with luck, will prove to me that my thoughts were clear, my theory sound.  When I sat down at my bench a few weeks ago, to begin a new project, I discovered I was not alone. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of people right there on my bench. The parts I had arrayed before me represented the multitudes there with me.

I looked at the tubes I planned to use and thought of the people they represented. People like Edison, and unknown glass blowers who worked for him. Beside Edison were the scientists and engineers from the Western Electric labs who brought the tube from a crude, fragile curiosity to a robust and reliable device that changed the world. Sitting near these people were the copper miners, the metallurgists, the petroleum engineers and the guy who first thought plastics could be used in capacitors. It is because of all these humans that the modern audiophile can argue on the Internet about the merits of certain component parts and technologies and topologies.

While pondering the work of all these people, I suddenly recognized a friend sitting on my bench (A friend, who makes much of my work possible). There he was in my shop, on my bench: Jack Elliano. For those of you not familiar with Jack’s work, he is the brains and hands behind Electra-Print Audio. Jack is an astonishing transformer designer and winder. While there are many other excellent winders, Jack is always the one I turn to when there is nothing "off-the-shelf" that suits my needs. Last spring, Jack extended an invitation to visit him and wind some transformers for myself. Not wanting to prove my mother’s child rearing techniques resulted in a fool, I accepted.

I’ve never felt quite as immediately at home as I felt in Jack’s workshop. This is not some sanitary modern facility run by CAD programs, but rather it is very much like a violin makers shop, or a 19^th century gunsmith’s shop. In here were sights and smells and activities wonderfully anachronistic. The stains around the varnish dipping pots were like the stains around my hot-glue pot in the stringed instrument shop where I’d once worked. The stacks of laminations and wire poking out of every corner reminded me of my old obsolete ammunition reloading shop, which was full of supplies for 0.577 Nitro Express, 25-35 Stevens and 40-82 Winchester. In place of my many reloading presses were marvelous hand-built winders. My romantic reverie was cut short when Jack sat me down at a winder and told me I was going to have to work for my supper (Actually, I also cooked our supper). I sat, in nervous fashion, trying to focus on the instructions I was receiving. Before I knew exactly what was expected of me, I was winding a 1:1 inter-stage transformer. Fortunately for me this is Electra-Print’s simplest designs.

On completion of my assigned task, Jack walked me through the lead attaching, the testing of the coil, and hot-goo dipping. I sat at the winder once again to create a mate for my very first transformer. While winding, it dawned on me that I really didn’t need  any inter-stage transformers, but what the heck, it was a good starting point. When the mate was also completed, Jack told me we would insert the laminations and bolt on the end bells the next morning, test one more time, then ship. Ship! Waddayamean ship? "Oh", says Jack, "These are for a customer."

Well, there I was a new force on the audio transformer front. A winder is born! Provided it’s a transformer, only slightly more complex than a single-wire inductor. I tell you, it was great when Jack told me my first transformers exceeded bandwidth spec., I thought I might even be gifted. That is, until Jack explained to me that my less than perfect technique (i.e.: a little loose) was good for this design, it could prove fatal with more demanding designs. In an instant I fell from the heights of gifted, to the foibles of a lucky idiot. Damn!

Over the next few delightful days, Jack introduced me to all sorts of design theory, winding techniques, and the characteristics of some of the materials used. I got to watch Jack wind a pentafilar transformer. He held the five wires in a perfect ribbon as he wound them! That transformer makes a McIntosh, interleaved bifilar wound transformer, look like a simple proposition.

Some of the most interesting facts I learned from Jack were about the history of the audio transformer: How bandwidth slowly grew wider. How modern insulation materials made transformers more reliable. Why many of the famous commercial designs of the past were not what they could have been, because of the accountants in the head office. All that I learned was integral to Jack’s no compromise philosophy. If a transformer design requires more wire and more laminations to achieve inductive balance, he uses it. If he needs to learn new methods, he does.  Jack can, and does, build nostalgic transformers, with utterly liquid, vintage sound. That is not where his passion lies. Jack is on a quest to build the perfect transformer: To understand transformer design so well that he sees it as a language in which he is fluent, and, therefore free to create. In many ways it is like being a writer: Until you can toy with the written word, and still remain within an understandable structure, you are not really a writer. Words on paper for the purpose conveying pertinent data is not writing. To wind transformers, is not to create a new design or approach.

Do I now have a winding machine in my shop? No. When I need a transformer I still call Jack. I’ve got a lot of other audio questions of my own yet to answer. My own language to learn. I’m glad Jack has relieved me of the need to understand transformers, in all their complexity.

In Japan, they have a system, whereby people who keep traditional crafts alive are accorded National Treasure status. These "Treasures" are allowed to pursue their craft, and to pass it along to the next generation, without worrying about a pay check. I think audio should have such a system (At least the honor part.). I nominate Jack as a charter member. There are many others in audio who also deserve such an honor. I’d love to know whom others would choose as their nominee. Let me know your choices, past or present.

I'll never get to meet the great folks who made electronics an engineering pursuit in the beginning, so I intend to really appreciate the dedicated people pushing the limits we have today, and: All the people of audio.