Århus Triode Festival 2000

I've been looking forward to this event since it was announced way back in march.

Kurt Steffenson, our Danish Joe, organized a meeting of Joesters so that we may all finally get to see the faces behind the names and generally just isolate ourselves from the rest of the world to talk about tubes and audio.

I arrived in Copenhagen on Wednesday 18:30 with a car full of parts and gear to take to the festival. I was not lost while looking for Århus, but there to pick up Bjørn Aaholm, a Danish tube-buddy of mine. Since my amps were only assembled and not wired yet, we had a lot of work to do. We realized it was getting light out again and that we should probably get some sleep. Only 4.5 hours, that would do it. Then we started up again in an attempt to finish the amps. No luck!!! We had to catch the ferry from Odden to Århus which left at 20:30.

Arriving in Århus we got something to eat, we only had two sandwiches that morning, and drove on to find Odder. When we arrived we met quite a few people there who had just arrived as well. After the usual chit-chat we unloaded the car and talked some more. We had agreed to finish our wiring that night, but at 4am we agreed this was not going to happen any more :)) Off to bed....

Friday morning, 8am.. breakfast :))) We met the rest of the people who would attend, finally got to see some faces of people that we e-mail with on a regular basis. You somehow always think they look a certain way, or you have some kind of impression, but it never holds water :))) Bjorn finished his preamps that morning and put it on display in auditorium 4 where we would set up our systems. I would finish my own wiring that afternoon and hook up the power-amps to the rest of the system.

The dutch audio-freak community was well represented I think. Besides me Bert Doppenberg, Mattijs de Vries, Remco Stoutjesdijk and Guido Tent showed up.

Q:  How many Joe's does it take to recharge a 2V filament battery?
A:  Five Joe's, six resistors, a car-battery and a diesel engine.

You had to have been there to get the humor behind this one ;)))

PICTURES

Yes!!! Found it!!! Our "route planner" took us sightseeing through the Danish
country side, but in the end we ended up where we wanted to be.

Eriksminde Efterskole, the place we would spend the next few days. It was located
in a picturesque countryside and the nearest neighbor was a kilometer away.

What this meeting was all about... DIY !!!!

I knew I forgot something... the battery charger for my KC3
battery filaments :(  We made due with a voltage divider
made up of some resistors we had on us. There was even a
suggestion we hook it up to my car battery; would have liked
a picture of that :))))

left to right... Mattijs de Vries, Guido Tent, Remco Stoutjesdijk, Bjørn Aaholm

Our setup on day two...

One of my AV5 mono-blocks next to Hartmut Quaschik's excellent Schue turntable

This is what you get when you keep soldering until 5am; you might
hook up an electrolytic the wrong way. Damn those electrolytics, my
paper-in-oils don't care how you hook them up, why do these!!!

Bjørn listening to our setup on day three (almost have it right ;)

The Tannoy's and Altec horns. Notice the large paper-in-oil on top of the horns.
This was to keep them from tipping over and falling off the cabinets :)))

Mattijs still working on his filter. Allen Wright and Guido Tent
started crying out of desperation (or was it just out of boredom?).
Bjørn is ducking the camera again, maybe he's wanted for something?

Jeremy Epstein pressed against the wall by the force of our 2W amp.
Or is he just laying back and having a good time?

l to r: Bjørn Aaholm, Jeremy Epstein with his wife and daughter (she'll just
take one of her dad's amps when she gets older) and Rick Francis & Son.

Mattijs finally came up with a high-pass filter using the three parts we
actually DID have with us :) It took him two long nights to get it right...
He was so desperate he even thought of salvaging parts from the TV
that was hanging from the wall, but we had to stop him !

We finally got it playing right on the last day of the festival.
Kurt up front visibly enjoying himself (great sight!!!)

No, this is not a UFO. It's the 3-way horn system of Peter Bahnsen.

Some other links to info about this great event...

http://home.student.utwente.nl/r.m.stoutjesdijk/

http://arhustriodefestival.homestead.com

http://www.t-linespeakers.org/arhus

http://www.t-linespeakers.org/arhus/more

http://hjem.get2net.dk/aaholm_audio/index.htm

http://home.t-online.de/home/MHuber

http://home.worldonline.dk/~kbsp2/triodefestival2000