Category: Pre-amplifier

A new 4P1L Siberian from Martin

Martin kindly sent me a couple of pictures of his latest DHT preamp incarnation of the 4P1L Siberian:

Here are some notes from Martin about his pre-amp:
“A bit more about the circuit, I have built the power supply around the nice AZ1 mesh rectifier. First cap after the rectifier is an obligato 6,8 UF oil followed by a 10H choke and a 100 UF ASC followed by the SSHV2 that I purchased via DiyAudio group buy. On your suggestion I have used the CCS from your 301A preamp. If I refer to my previous preamp with the EF6 penthode in triode connection in parafeed configuration I can say that the 4P1L preamp sounds more detailed and with more air around the instruments. Finally I will do some tests with different output caps to find out if this makes a difference. At the moment I use the Vitamin Q.

Best regards,
Martin”

Listening to the 26 preamp

Now that I have a very quiet preamp indeed, I’m a happy bunny. Changed today the pair of White Westinghouse 26 ST NOS that I’ve been using for over a month with a pair of RCA CX-226 and have to say that I enjoyed a far more sweeter and rounded tone out of this preamp.

Bass is still deep and treble is clear with the sweetness of the globe valve fingerprinted in the tone as you would expect. I will run this setup for a month and report results…

You can still see the clips used to provide earth return at the output to avoid the ground loop that I unnecessary created. God knows how may tweaks I did to improve the HT rail ripple before I realised that it was a simple ground loop.

Glow tubes fed by a CCS are not just very quiet, they are really cool

Testing a CX226 pair

A nice pair of CX226 in the new preamp. They are in very good shape, very low distortion measured in the workshop time ago and no hum induced, so great for this preamp.

Sound is definitely warmer, without loosing any of the bass and bright treble from this preamp. A great preamp so far, happy like a bunny!

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26 Preamp Gen2 completed

Finally, here it is.

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Improved sound compared to LL1660 version. This OT (LL2745/8mA)is better suited for the 26 in this configuration. Sacrificed output impedance a tad to get more gain. Filaments starved at 760mA. Distortion is as low as 0.02% @ 3Vrms output.

First listening session with Mingus, exceeded my expectations. Rounder bass and more space. Like this sound!
Will do some proper measurements but for now will enjoy and listen to it…