| ANALOG GUY |
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| ANALOG GUY |
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| ANALOG GUY |
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| ANALOG GUY |
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| ANALOG GUY |
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| Bonsai |
All those control knobs on the front plate - they drive me nuts.
I don't know if I like the power supply that much!
Is this the same Cello that had the tone controls? I cannot read from the photos.
How much did they sell this pre-amp for?
Still, nice pice of engineering. |
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| GeeVee |
Hi all.
Nice looking preamp. Looks beautifully made.
Lots of controls. I must admit that I am a bit of a knob bloke.
Personally, I would like to see within the specifications "knobs per square foot!! - just joking.
On a serious note, was / is Cello somehow tied in with Mark Levinson systems?
I remember reading somewhere a long time ago that this was a company spinoff . However I may be wrong.
Regards,
George. |
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| jacco vermeulen |
Mark Levinson started Cello in the early 80s after flunking the final exam at the ML corporation.
Tom Colangelo left with him to set up Cello, Mr Colangelo was the Cello design guy.
Rumor has it that MarkyMark had his girlfriend do the endless labor of semi matching for the first Cello products, i have a picture of one of his female love laborers.
Mark's girly girly tap still remained too high, and Cello was also left over to people with a true business appeal.
Mark flunks overpriced China gear nowadays, sometimes writes books together with hardcore porn actrices.
Mr Colangelo has his own Viola company where he designs and builds beautifull flower amps. |
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| GeeVee |
Hi Jacco
Thanks for the reply.
I definately did not know that. I always thought that Mark was the brains / chief engineer, because the equipment was named after him.
The only thing that I remember from Cello, was a ridiculously overpriced passive preamp.
It was nothing more than a selector switch and an attenuator.
I remember reading an article on this preamp many years ago.
This is what made me think that it was perhaps a subsidary of ML.
Regards,
George. |
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| jacco vermeulen |
Bit confusing, i agree.
The current Cello owner Mr McCullough has worked both for Madrigal (= Mark Levinson) and for the early Cello ltd company untill it went bankrupt 5/6 years ago.
Safe to say that everyone who has met Mr Levinson finds him an entertaining fellow.
Very pricy, but the Cello products from the second half of the '80s i've heard do ring your bell.
The modular Audio Suite pre-amp and the Audio Palette tone controll unit still are gems.
Here's one of the blue cap things you see in the last posted picture of the Palette Pre, a Roederstein KP1830 high freq. polypropylene and aluminium foil capacitor, even pretty neat stuff nowadays.
(should be, a 10nF/1% costs a buck fifty currently, better not leave words to diyA sharks how many i have) |
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| QSerraTico_Tico |
Very funny Jacko but not very correct.
Jim McCullough bought the remains of Cello after Mark Levinson left and is still in business...
http://matthew-james.net/
Mark Levinson was married to an actress everyone was drooling about and together they wrote a book about the Art of Love-Making. She was not a porn actress AFAIK. Eventually they split up, divorced, so the book did not help for their own marriage hahaha.
After Mark was kicked out of Cello he founded Red Rose audio:
http://www.redrosemusic.com/
There was indeed a Chinese Amp that he sold overpriced and a bit modded with OPA627 ICs. Confronted with that he simply withdraw the model. Now he also makes tube equipment as he bought some tube amp company.
See also:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Levinson
Tom Colangelo, Mark's pet engeneer become jobless after Cello closed temporarely and founded Viola Audio Laboratories with partners:
http://www.violalabs.com/ |
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| TomWaits |
| Jacco's version of events is more appealing to me. ;) |
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| janneman |
This Cello stuff is a far cry from the original stuff when ML was still heading the company. Seems Mr McCullough or what his name is, bought the name but not the concept.
BTW, AFAIK Cello equipment was designed by Richard Burwen.
I have met ML once but he came across more as a marketing guy than an engineer.
Jan Didden |
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| QSerraTico_Tico |
| quote: | Originally posted by janneman
This Cello stuff is a far cry from the original stuff when ML was still heading the company. Seems Mr McCullough or what his name is, bought the name but not the concept.
BTW, AFAIK Cello equipment was designed by Richard Burwen.
I have met ML once but he came across more as a marketing guy than an engineer.
Jan Didden |
No all early Cello equipment was designed by Tom Colangelo!
Mark is not an engineer but musician and ...............marketeer. |
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| jacco vermeulen |
Cello has Mr McCullough stats
I've seen the series, read some of the book, looks like a porn actress, writes like one. :clown:
Colangelo did the first Cello products, the modular preamp is one.
"Forced out through the backdoor" would be more interesting reading |
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| QSerraTico_Tico |
| quote: | Originally posted by jacco vermeulen
Cello has Mr McCullough stats
I've seen the series, read some of the book, looks like a porn actress, writes like one. :clown:
Colangelo did the first Cello products, the modular preamp is one. |
Question remains who seems to know most about the book's subject the man or the girl? |
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| Christer |
| quote: | Originally posted by janneman
I have met ML once but he came across more as a marketing guy than an engineer.
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He isn't an engineer. He was trained as and worked as a jazz musician. There seems to be slightly different storys about his own involvement in technical alspects. There was, and probably still is, a video somewhere on the internet where he talks about all this, and there he gave the impression of having the vision of the perfect sound reproduction, rather than having any idea himself how to achieve it. On the other hand, this biography
http://www.redrosemusic.com/mark.shtml
seems to suggest that started quite early to work also as a recording engineer and seems to suggest he was an electronics DIYer.
Maybe somebody who knows/knew him could fill in with more reliable info? John Curl must have worked at ML when its founder was still in charge I think. |
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| jacco vermeulen |
| Mr Levinson would have made a grand hardcore actor, and Ron Jeremy would have turned hairless from envy. :clown: |
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| janneman |
From Dick Burwen's bio:
"As a consultant Dick helped Mark Levinson with the first products of Mark Levinson Audio Systems and Cello LTD’s Audio Palette. "
The typical construction of the Palette with 10's of small pcb's sitting on top of each other, with power and signal distributed through the chrome plated stand-off was Dicks hallmark.
Jan Didden |
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| jacco vermeulen |
| That's interesting, i have a printed interview with Mr Levinson and Tom Colangelo from the time of the launch of the Audio Suite. |
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| QSerraTico_Tico |
| quote: | Originally posted by janneman
From Dick Burwen's bio:
"As a consultant Dick helped Mark Levinson with the first products of Mark Levinson Audio Systems and Cello LTD’s Audio Palette. "
The typical construction of the Palette with 10's of small pcb's sitting on top of each other, with power and signal distributed through the chrome plated stand-off was Dicks hallmark.
Jan Didden |
John Curl designed the JC2 preamplifier, one of the 1st Mark Levinson products. Hence the name JC2. John also designed the JC1-AC and JC1-DC MC cartridge preamps.
Dick Burwen designed the LNP-2. also an early product which was way more expensive than the JC2, yet sounded worse IMHO.
John Curl was Mark's 1st engineer. Too bad the site www.marklev.com seems to be down. Had much interesting info.
Burwen came again in the picture with the Cello Audio Palette equalizer/preamp. |
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| ANALOG GUY |
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| ANALOG GUY |
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| QSerraTico_Tico |
| quote: | Originally posted by ANALOG GUY
Please comment |
I see................ a lot of opamps
:confused:
You care to tell us the type?
[The strong point of John Curl and Tom Colangelo was their discrete circuit designs] |
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| sunrise |
yes, yes, the types of the opamp please - if possible ... and better quality pictures would be more than perfect.....if there is a possibility for that..... :)
:cannotbe: |
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| elecon |
I met the ML man several times through the 80's and 90's , and it is clear that he was always the charismatic "conductor", but I wonder if this is the case anymore?
Regarding designers at the old Cello that moved to the new Viola; don't forget Paul Jayson who designs both speakers and electronics (a very talented guy).
Take a look at http://www.violalabs.com/designers.html
Here in Japan we think of the new Viola company as the continuation of the old Cello company, and when you experience the products in sound and styling; this is easy to understand.
I personally liked the old Cello Encore, so I keep a set of the original Encore preamp (with phono built in) and also a pair of the excellent Encore Mono power amps. The power amps are far better (performing) than the preamp which unfortunately is full of low-grade iron pillars that also are used for many electrical connections (It really makes a difference when you demagnetize it frequently.) The preamp does however LOOK really good, so I will most likely keep it in my collection. :cool: |
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| DCPreamp |
I’m so glad to see those pics of the Cello preamp internals. Considering the money they fetch, I’ve always wondered if they were built with truly exotic and unusual methods and parts, or if they were just hype. I see they are just hype.
Not to impugn the design, but jeez, look at all the sockets, connectors, op-amps, loosely twisted wire pairs, bundled wires, etc. Sorry, but this simply doesn’t look like a low/middle-four-figure piece of equipment. Sorry if (that) I offend, but this looks like a $500 preamp smothered in subjectivism and sales hype. I’ve read purists totally condemn op-amps, let alone dozens of them in a signal path who would probably worship this. Considering its age, wanna bet those PCBs are copper – oh wait, isn’t copper completely audible and sounds horrible?
Anyway, thanks again for posting the pics. This just further confirms my feelings on op-amps and subjectivist whacko’s. |
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| john curl |
| I must say that Mark Levinson (the man) is a visionary. Most of what is presented here, is true also. I have not spoken to him for many years. |
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| QSerraTico_Tico |
| quote: | Originally posted by DCPreamp
I’m so glad to see those pics of the Cello preamp internals. Considering the money they fetch, I’ve always wondered if they were built with truly exotic and unusual methods and parts, or if they were just hype. I see they are just hype.
Not to impugn the design, but jeez, look at all the sockets, connectors, op-amps, loosely twisted wire pairs, bundled wires, etc. Sorry, but this simply doesn’t look like a low/middle-four-figure piece of equipment. Sorry if (that) I offend, but this looks like a $500 preamp smothered in subjectivism and sales hype. I’ve read purists totally condemn op-amps, let alone dozens of them in a signal path who would probably worship this. Considering its age, wanna bet those PCBs are copper – oh wait, isn’t copper completely audible and sounds horrible?
Anyway, thanks again for posting the pics. This just further confirms my feelings on op-amps and subjectivist whacko’s. |
The original Cello Encore preamp had discrete circuitry designed by Tom Colangelo.
The Cello shown here full of opamps seems to be from the shaft of James McCullough.
http://matthew-james.net/intro.cfm
:angel: |
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| thermionic |
It's very surprising to see Sfernice pots on a unit costing that much money... From the channel tracking tests I've done (I once worked for a firm that used Sfernice PA11 in commercial quantities), they're really nothing special tracking-wise, even the 10% variant. The feel isn't up to much either. There are many pots I'd put in front of the PA11, not least because of the PA11's fragility (ask any Tech who repairs Focusrite gear).
Justin |
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| jacco vermeulen |
The Palette is not the work of Matthew-J, but still Levinson/Colangelo's wrong doing.
The critical eye would have noticed that the Cello manufacture adress on the back of the Palette is the same as Viola Labs, Viola also offered upgrades for the original Cello products in later years.
The Palette was intended as a consumer model at a third of the Audio Palette cost.
Cello sold only 5 dozen of the +$20K Audio Palette, even in the late 80s that's a poverty figure.
The cheaper palette was likely an attempt to enter a niche market with bigger sale numbers before the financial doodoo hit the fan at Cello's.
The rotten potentiometers were highly criticized by the audio reviewing press at the time when Cello introduced the Palette.
I recall it as a major dissapointment after having seen and heard the fully discrete modular Cello pre-amp a few years earlier.
The 1/6" front plate of the mega expensive Audio Palette already raised an eyebrow or two back then, stuffing an opamp clone in the Audio Palette case with cheaper knobs was a very foolish thing.
Even amateurs used nicer precision pots then, why stick crummy ones in a pre-amp that cost the equivalent of $12.5K overhere. |
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| pinkmouse |
| quote: | Originally posted by thermionic
There are many pots I'd put in front of the PA11, not least because of the PA11's fragility (ask any Tech who repairs Focusrite gear). |
Or Amek. ;) |
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| happy_guy |
| Folks, I heard the Palette (later version - loaded with Opamps) once. Surprisingly, it sounded quite nice. Wondering whether anybody has the schematics for the older ones? Tone controls are useful if they are not 'abused'. Used to tape a lot of live music with 'flat' condenser mics. Post-production with minor equalization always helped. It's no different if you slightly enhance and sharpen a digital image. Mark. ;) |
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| jacco vermeulen |
| quote: | Originally posted by happy_guy
schematics |
You still have $500 of AD devices lying around ? |
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| stellavox |
Hi Guys,
The pic is of the Palette Preamp which is distinct from the original Palette.
On Monday I visited the location in Southern Ct. where the fellow who bought the Cello inventory has the remaining parts. Picked up the remaining Palette and Audio Suite modules PLUS most of the schematic drawings. Will return for more
The Palette preamp was a scaled-down version of the original using a couple dozen OP627's and a few OP633"s. Got two sets of boards for it.
Unfortunately, no sheet metal.
Charles |
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| h_a |
Hi Charles,
do we have the slightest chance to see some of your new, shiny schematics here online? :D
All the best, Hannes |
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| Nrik |
Based on the equlizer curves found in the Sterophiles test of Palette Preamplifier, I would guess it is based on a standard design for constant Q equalizer like on Rod Elliots
http://sound.westhost.com/project75.htm
Q would be 0.7 and where the Pallette Preamplifier uses the mentioned opamps, the Audio Pallette would use discrete opamps, like the ones in the 1Mohm preamp, ofcourse with higher voltage swing than standard opamps, to ensure headroom, even when one pushes 15 Hz to +20dB.
Of course it would be very difficult to clone the 59 positions attenuators, allthough Schallco make som nice but very expensive ones with many positions. |
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| chev350 |
Hi Stellavox,
I would like to second a request for the schematics - please.
As a student stuying Electircal Engineering it eoul be good to see examples of the Cello designs.
For some reason I can't private mail you - something about being moderated.
Thanks anyway
Paul. |
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