Vintage Philips ag9015. I love you.

[Sushant Sharma]

This beautiful amplifier came home today. Its designed a bit too radio but the sound...wow..I read enough about it before making the purchase but it was still a punt. Lots of positive reviews on the internet and I think it lives up to the reputation. It is output transformerless operation with philips 800 ohms speakers but thankfully has an output transformer for 8/16 ohms speakers. I have only used it with my Altec speakers.
The sound has mid range body and a pronounced top end sizzle and good bass. The 12 watts push-pull I think are making the difference as opposed to the 4 watts SET amplifier that i am use to.This little gem is truly a wonderful vintage that was produced from 1959 to 1965.
Theres a whole blogsite devoted to modifications for this philips ag9015 but even in its stock form, it is wonderful sounding to me.
The more seasoned members have already posted on the forum about this amp before me. If you see one in the wild, please get it, it is a very exciting amplifier. Thanks for reading.

 

[Sushant Sharma]

Posting again on the recap and change of tubes made to this wonderful gem.

So after a brief period of enjoying this amp, I checked tube voltages and they weren't upto the mark. Had a 25uf 100v capacitor go up in smoke. Some resisitors were old and had drifted in value. Fixing some cold solders brought back things. Thankfully the transformers were fine.

So I bought new dual capacitors from Audio crafts and some nichicon capacitors as well. Was lucky because I couldn't find these dual capacitors anywhere else and didnt want to import. Bought a bundle of carbon and metallic film resisitors.


All the electrolytics have now been changed and lots of resistors too. The biggest change was when I bought new gz34 rectifier tube and voltage came up as per circuit. The bass and slam and grip on the speakers improved multifold.

The 4 mullard nos power el86 tubes just arrived yesterday and have brought up voltages to specification but I am yet to play the amp after changing these tubes.

The website by Bakos Gyorgy is a definitive guide on this amp and what all one can do to extract the best from it. He answered my very basic questions with patience.

Why Philips AG9015?

In short words, because it is one of the best amplifiers after modifications! The EL86 is a modified EL84 with a low impedance output, designed for OTL (~800Ohm) operation. The purely OTL AG9014 wa…

philipsag9015.home.blog

Asnain from Kolarkar audio was also very helpful and i cant thank him enough.

Attaching some photos.