preamps

mhardy6647

Due to the kindness of a friend from MA, I got to play with a couple of nicer than average vacuum tube (kit built) preamps yesterday.

A tricked-out Bottlehead Foreplay:

DSC_7133 (3) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

and a "Vacuum Tube Audio" SP14:

http://www.tubes4hifi.com/SP14.htm


DSC_7135 (2) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr


They both sounded pretty good to me (us). The Foreplay seemed a bit more forward sounding but was otherwise very much in the running with the SP14 thingy.

muncybob

Why left/right gain plus master volume control? Has a nice clean design.

mhardy6647

Just a way to manage gain, balance and easy adjustment of volume, I reckon.
The three controls are all in the form of stepped attenuators. This particular example of this preamp, at least, is fairly seriously resourced.

motorhead43026

I like foreplay, never experienced bottlehead but I am game.

motorhead43026

Those do look real nice. I need to stay away from anything with tubes. With my addictive personality I can see me being tube poor.

mhardy6647

I've been trying to spend some time upstairs.
So far, the rhythm of my consulting biz shows a lag in the first couple of months of the year, then some acceleration to a nutso end of the year. This is the best time of the year to play inside, too -- garden season's not that far away.

halo

I would love to try a bottlehead phono pre in my setup or a budgie tube phono pre - just to see what some tubes would bring to the vinyl side of the setup.

mhardy6647

careful what you wish for

The 'entry level' Bottlehead phono preamps sound pretty good. The gain is a little limited, though. Maybe not a big problem for normal folks but in my system I have to crank things up pretty much to their limits if I want to listen "loud".

This isn't horrific but it's a little bit of a disappointment.

For the record, there are ahem two Bottlehead phono preamps here.

One is a very early version of their original preamp kit (the Seduction). It is 'bare bones' (none of the Bottlehead 'upgrades' -- except it was retrofitted with their later, better - shielded, if memory serves - power transformer).

DSCN5316 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
DSCN5315 (1) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

this is what it looks like below decks (with the original PT):
P1020755 (1) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

and this is what it looks like with the retrofitted, Bottlehead-brand PT:
P1020763 (1) by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

The other one is mrbiron's kit-built Reduction.
Rather nicer in all respects (including execution of the build & finish!) than my Seduction

DSC_2913 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

Both of these are two stage preamps using 6DJ8/6922 high-mu triodes and passive RIAA EQ.

Willow

motorhead43026 wrote: »

I like foreplay, never experienced bottlehead but I am game.

Who doesn't like foreplay.....