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In the Forum: Melquiades Amplifier
In the Thread: Valve Preamplifier for Macondo/DSET
Post Subject: Good luck with that ....:-)Posted by Romy the Cat on: 4/20/2019
Anthony, I know what you
feel but I am no sure that I might be too useful for you quest. Let me to explain
first the points you made.
I do not know why Placette
does not work in your situation. You do not have enough volume? If it is the
case then you might have too low gains in your front end. All my front ends
have very high gain: Bidat, Lavry, my phonostage, Passific use have it. The
only in Video mode what I drive the things from Oppo then I have no volume and
that brought me to new high gain active Placette modules. I do not know what
frond end you have; it might be easy to add some gain you your current front
end. If it is not discreet circuit in you front-end and has some kind of chip
then my lowering a feedback you can always get 6-12db more. If it is not volume
but you do not like the Placette sound then I would like to hear more details:
what specific you do not like in it. I think I know very well this unit and I might
be able to debug the problems.
Now about the bigger fish to
fry: to make another pream. Here is I feel a bit out of depth. I spent a LOT of
time to look for great preamp and what I found Placette I did not try anything else.
There is absolutely no reasons to say that Placette was the only one good
preamp during my “active” period of my looking. I just reported among what I experienced
but it was understandably limited. During the last 15 year that I had not been looking
for any preams there was zillion other preams made and I have no idea what they
are. Still for the configuration of a pram driving passive filters you need a current
source with as low output impedance as possible. There is not a lot preamps out
there that drive a lot of current with sub 20R impedance. Many contemporary oops
preams will do but they not necessary sound acceptable. So, here we go… the
game is open…
If I do play the game of looking for an alternative to Placette preamps then I would look still for discreet
SS units like Blowtorch and alike. The active Placette with gain is a controversial
inot in my estimation. It is very good but I do feel a difference between the no
gain Placette and the gain Placette. It is hard to explain the difference as it
is not in realm of sound but rather is a realm of “efforts”. I have not happy with any tube preams I have
heard.
Now we enter the realm of DIY:
the idea of making you own preamp. I know absolutely nothing bout SS designs. I
made one that was designed for me by a very strong person and it was an honorable
nightmare sonically. My tube line stages also were not good but it means
nothing, you can me luckier. I would certainly not consider YO186. It is a spectacular
tube but very colored, particular in the under-power mode as it is being used in
Milq. In the Milq specific application, driving S2 and operating in a very
limited range I feel I get the best from YO186 and use the YO186 colorations creatively.
I however feel that it is no way a wide range tube and any type 45 tube is WAY
more accurate sounding.
How to get low output impedance
of out tubes. Yes, the OPT might help. Paralleling tube and trying the OTL mode
might help. To use some low R rube like 6C33C as preamp out tube might be a
very interesting direction to go. Another alternative would be to have a
voltage gain with tube and to have output no gain SS buffer. There is many
options out there but too little time to try all of it… I am not sure why I
feel you need a tube preamp. It sounds to me that you need gain not a tube
preamp. If you formulate your objective that you need a tube preamp then try to
formulate for your why you feel you need tube preamp. The point I make is that
any progression in audio navigation should start with formulating a proper question
to yourself:
http://www.goodsoundclub.com/Forums/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=432
That is in my view helps to focus on what you need instead of
what is possible out there.
This is very interesting thread I would like to see where it take you. Rerurn to Romy the Cat's Site