Stupid is as Stupid Does - A little Bottlehead Foreplay - Dodd

MrBuhl

Well - following my listen with the Rumba, I'm going to have to sheepishly admit that I made a bit of a boo-boo. Well, more than a bit of a small boo-boo, I guess... So long story short, I hooked the Dodd MLP back up after rolling in a nos quad of Amperex 12AX7's to give them a listen and forgot to hook up my source components before I powered it up.

Yikes! A quick pop and spark and I unhooked it immediately but I definitely popped something. Little black thing is cracked that I can see for sure. Soo - I'll be giving Charlie Cocci a call I guess to see if he'll have a look at it for me... but I needed something in the mean time. Enter the Bottlehead Foreplay below:



Came with the major upgrades already installed, DC pre-heat, Anticipation, gold RCA's, upgraded caps, etc. I have to say, for the money, (barely more than the kit used to sell for without the upgrades), I was pretty surprised when it arrived.



Hooked it up to the Dodd 50W, and the new SDA2BTL's that I recently built up, and I'm pretty surprised by the sound too. It has a nice black background overall, though the stepped attenuators are really crackly when moving between steps, I guess that's par for the course with that upgrade. Overall - it'll definitely do until I get the Dodd back. It's no Dodd, don't get me wrong, but for a $200 tube preamp, I'm pretty shocked at it for now!

SCompRacer

Sorry to hear about the Dodd. Bottlehead is known for great circuit design. They have some higher end 300B tube pre amp kits like the BeePre.

I have a Bottlehead Eros phono stage that punches way above its weight. Quiet too, low distortion. They also offer an impressive Tube Phono they build for $7500.

F1nut

Little black thing is cracked that I can see for sure.

Post a pic, might be able to tell you what it is and how to fix it yourself.

MrBuhl

F1nut wrote: »

Little black thing is cracked that I can see for sure.

Post a pic, might be able to tell you what it is and how to fix it yourself.

Thanks Jesse, going out of town tonight but I will post asap.

@SCompRacer yes, I was very surprised at how quiet the design is, I can imagine their more pricey offerings are very good indeed if this one is that good at it's price point!

MrBuhl

@F1nut - here's a pic (stolen from blueMD's post) for now, I don't remember exactly which one of the set - but it's definitely one of the black half cylinder shaped pieces pointed out by the lighting bolt. Cracked right through it.

BlueMDPicker

That's a transistor. There are two types on that internal board:

KSP94 336 (two of them, the one you're pointing to and the one below it)
KSP44 339 (the other 4)

BlueMDPicker

Curious if you were able to repair and get back in service?

MrBuhl

I have not tackled it at all yet... Sadly! I have it on my list of things to do, but life (and new turntables) keep getting in the way LOL. I have it pulled from that system and ready to either have a go at or call Charlie Cocci, but have done neither so far.

Partly I'm a little too intimidated to get started!

BlueMDPicker

Totally understand. Without access to a schematic and/or test point readings, it's pretty much an exercise in futility. Please let me know if you have any success should you send it to Mr. Cocci. Good luck!