New Toy To Play With

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Nick
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#31 Re: New Toy To Play With

Post by Nick »

That's a complicated questiom
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#32 Re: New Toy To Play With

Post by simon »

The simplest ones often are :-)
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#33 Re: New Toy To Play With

Post by mainscablesrus »

IslandPink wrote: Fri Apr 03, 2020 12:37 pm That is indeed a nice set-up. You're either a music-lover or a Longdog collector ( or maybe both ! ) .
Both indeed. Nick's stuff is bloody good, pity we both got into this at a rather late age otherwise if it was 20 years earlier it would be a different game totally.

The amps with my speakers sound very good indeed, the reference phono is astonishingly good, I run it with a high output MC as I don't like SUT's, or maybe I should say I don't like the SUT's I have tried.

I found one of the early models of quartz power supply and run the Sony TTS8000 with it for now, I just need Nick to make a good pre-amp next.
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#34 Re: New Toy To Play With

Post by JohnG »

Quartz Power Supply to Run a Sony TTS 8000.
Have you compared the inbuilt vs off board Quartz PS ?
Is there any noticeable improvements to be had by adding the off board Quartz PS ?

I am totally in agreement that getting the interfaces 'on the money' from the Tonearm through to a Phonostage Output is a challenge,
which in many cases the maths for the arrangement are not followed.
I would suggest many will settle for Hum Free as the chosen goal, off which I am one.
I am looking to address this differently, learning the choices for alternative arrangements where the maths is better understood,
and using interfaces that reflect these maths.
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#35 Re: New Toy To Play With

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JohnG wrote: Sat Apr 04, 2020 7:39 am I am totally in agreement that getting the interfaces 'on the money' from the Tonearm through to a Phonostage Output is a challenge,
which in many cases the maths for the arrangement are not followed.
I would suggest many will settle for Hum Free as the chosen goal, off which I am one.
I am looking to address this differently, learning the choices for alternative arrangements where the maths is better understood,
and using interfaces that reflect these maths.
I am intrigued what you mean with that, maybe another thread where you could expand your ideas?
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#36 Re: New Toy To Play With

Post by Paul Barker »

A nice el84 preamp perhaps Nick?
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#37 Re: New Toy To Play With

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Paul Barker wrote: Sat Apr 04, 2020 11:33 am A nice el84 preamp perhaps Nick?
What happened to the Raven (?) preamp, was it a success ?
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#38 Re: New Toy To Play With

Post by Nick »

The problem with a preamp is finding a way of making one that's better than a passive. A pot or stepped attenuator in a box is a good solution and its hard to see what extra value I can add to that. A AVC or TVC is also a good solution, but as I don't wind transformers (and don't want to start) again its hard to see where I can add value. The one good preamp circuit I know of is that balanced one I brought to eggy years ago that was was loosely based on the Raven and full of Sowter transformers. I do have a mind to go back to that and try and fit it into a phono stage size case. But that still has the problem that it needs an attenuator, and i can't decide on the best way of doing that. Relays and resistors probably,

But none of the options are simple and I have lots to build at the moment for what I already make.

A el84 would work, but other than gain, not sure what it would provide on its own, to be fair a LM4562 will do that.

At the moment at home and for the last few shows I have been using a S&B TVC and that does very few things wrong that I can hear.

To Dave's annoyance I have put a stop to the keep designing new stuff I was doing up to a year or so ago. I am only going to do that now if I can see a way it will improve from what I currently make. The Ref Phono is better than the MCj3 (and honestly maybe everything else I have heard), but its also 6 times the price, but I can't see a obvious area I can improve in the jfet phono to get it closer to the Ref. So they stay where they are. The p6 monoblocks were slightly better than the p6-100m as they were much bigger so more space for transformer and caps, but they were heavy and impractical and TBH a pain to build. The Quartz supply is doing what I intended it to do, I am resisting the calls to make it into a bigger general power regenerator as the problems don't scale linearly with output power. I have said I will do a 50Hz fixed speed version for Dave if he gets a plain front panel made, but that's just a case of missing things out and different software.
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#39 Re: New Toy To Play With

Post by mainscablesrus »

JohnG wrote: Sat Apr 04, 2020 7:39 am Quartz Power Supply to Run a Sony TTS 8000.
Have you compared the inbuilt vs off board Quartz PS ?
Is there any noticeable improvements to be had by adding the off board Quartz PS ?

I am totally in agreement that getting the interfaces 'on the money' from the Tonearm through to a Phonostage Output is a challenge,
which in many cases the maths for the arrangement are not followed.
I would suggest many will settle for Hum Free as the chosen goal, off which I am one.
I am looking to address this differently, learning the choices for alternative arrangements where the maths is better understood,
and using interfaces that reflect these maths.
John its a mains regenerator essentially, I would expect any turntable to benefit from using it, Thorens were the first to use the idea then it was copied by others.
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#40 Re: New Toy To Play With

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Thank you Dave.
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#41 Re: New Toy To Play With

Post by izzy wizzy »

Nick wrote: Sat Apr 04, 2020 12:01 pm The problem with a preamp is finding a way of making one that's better than a passive. A pot or stepped attenuator in a box is a good solution and its hard to see what extra value I can add to that. A AVC or TVC is also a good solution, but as I don't wind transformers (and don't want to start) again its hard to see where I can add value. The one good preamp circuit I know of is that balanced one I brought to eggy years ago that was was loosely based on the Raven and full of Sowter transformers. I do have a mind to go back to that and try and fit it into a phono stage size case. But that still has the problem that it needs an attenuator, and i can't decide on the best way of doing that. Relays and resistors probably,

But none of the options are simple and I have lots to build at the moment for what I already make.
That's essentially my line stage now. Before it was a sowter TVC. I use it now as an AVC on the output where I think it works better than at the input driven by sources.
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#42 Re: New Toy To Play With

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Nick wrote: Sat Apr 04, 2020 12:01 pm To Dave's annoyance I have put a stop to the keep designing new stuff I was doing up to a year or so ago. I am only going to do that now if I can see a way it will improve from what I currently make. .
I hope the turn table prototype has not been completely shelved...
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#43 Re: New Toy To Play With

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THats out of my hands at the moment and waiting on the company who were doing the metalwork.
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