AXPONA 2015

It's a great time for headphones at the moment, what with the new Mr. Speakers Ether and HiFiMAN HE-1000 appearing. One of the things these new cans will do is let us listen afresh to amps that have been around for a while. I was in Mr. Speaker's booth enjoying the Ether very much when I realized I had been tuned into an old favorite: the Woo Audio WA5, a 300B single-ended, class-A headphone and speaker amp. The sound was glorious.

In this two-chassis design, a pair of 5U4G tube do the rectifying duties in the power supply chassis, while a pair of 6SN7s drive a pair of 300B output tubes in the main amplifier chassis. A four position rotary switch to the right of the volume control selects one of four pairs of RCA single-ended inputs on the rear panel. A similar switch to the right of the volume control configures the amplifier circuit for output to speakers (labeled SPK) using the binding posts on the rear panel; an AKG K1000 (K1K) on a front panel mounted four pin XLR; and low impedance (HPL) and high impedance (HPH) headphones plugging into the front panel mounted 1/4" headphone jack.

The amplifier starts at $3500 with numerous tube complement options also available. A WA5-LE (Lite Edition) is also available that forgoes the ability to drive speakers or the AKG K1000, which starts at $2750 and again has numerous tube and component upgrade paths.

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