What is a Futterman, you might ask? Once upon a time, there was an electronic genius named Julius Futterman, who had a small company called Harvard Electronics where he designed and built OTL, or Output Transformerless amplifiers. Now what does that have to do with me?
When I was in college, I as most people, believed that the current transistor amplifiers were far superior to tube amplifiers. I was listening, at the time, to a Dynaco SCA 80, which I very much enjoyed. As the big, heavy, hot running tube amplifiers had fallen out of favor, owners were selling them in large numbers, and replacing them with shiny, new, "low distortion", cool running transistor amps. This was in the early 70s, BTW. One day, while looking through the Sunday classifieds, I saw an ad for an HK Citation 4 and 5 tube amp and preamp. Being adventurous, I bought them, took them home, hooked them up to my Tannoy 15" Golds in Stromberg Carlson Acoustic Labyrinths (transmission lines), fired them up and OMG!!!!!!! WOW!!!!! From that moment on, I was addicted to tube amps (well at this point in time, certainly, solid state has come a long way and can be great).
I started scouring the Sunday classifieds for audiophiles' tube amp castoffs: McIntosh 30, 60s, 75s, C22s, Marantz 8Bs, 7Cs, (not to mention 10Bs, the tuner that cost Saul his company) Eicos, more Citations, oh I was having a field day. Actually, I amassed a huge collection that we used
in the early days at Polk to drive our sound reinforcement system at the City Fair, when doing sound for Duke Ellington, which I got to mix. One day, I replaced my Tannoys with the legendary KLH 9s, which I was driving with a pair of similarly legendary Marantz Model Nines. They had rack mount handles and had belonged to the US Navy Band (I received these in trade for my 10B, and eventually sold them to Japan to finance my first trip to Italy).
But I do digress. The ultimate amplifiers for the KLH 9s were said to be Futtermans, which were actually designed by Julius for just that purpose. No output transformers meant a clearer path for the music, with less iron and wire in the way. I bought my first Futterman from an audiophile in NY, who had purchased it from Lyric. It was an H3a, a stereo 100 watt/channel +/- (mostly minus). I brought it home, hooked it up to the 9s, and OMG, a revelation, even though the Marantz 9s, especially in triode, were wonderful, the Futterman blew it away. Julius had a small "factory", well little shop, on the second floor in a building at 72nd Street and Broadway in NYC. I had heard that one could show up there, leave Julius with a deposit, and that he would custom build you an amp. At that point he was building the monaural H3aa. So I showed up, met Julius and his helper, left a deposit, and six months later my amps were done, and they were magnificent on the 9s, and on everything I ever used them on.
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The Futterman OTL H3aa Amplifiers. |
At Polk, we brought them to trade shows to drive our Polk 10s. In fact, HiFi Trade News published a big double spread picture of them back in the day. Julius eventually passed away, and Harvey Rosenberg bought the patents from his wife and under the New York Audio Lab aegis, built "overbuilt" Futtermans, that were never the same as those that Julius built. Nowadays, I listen to Atma-Sphere OTLs, which are wonderful. And my Futtermans? They are still working perfectly (outside of a little corrosion on the input RCAs) and ready to stand in, when called for.
