Bigbottle Phonostage Builders thread

How does Jantzen sound here? I have Obbligato Premium (Gold ones).
Ye they are good. Very detailed and transparency is excellent .. just awaiting the bottom end for fill out but for the money I am very impressed.

Trying some Mundorf Supreme oils next. Should be here today and I'll give them 100hours on the burn in device (power supply lol) before I start listening
 
Just sticking some juice through them 20200729_160418.jpg
 
I`ve just completed comparing The Paradise mc Phonoamp to the Bigbottle Mc amp...
And the winner is .....Big bottle...!!
Bigbottle has better midrange and treble more power,drive in the music.More dynamic.
So do I regret building the Bigbottle No...!!
I might as well sell the Paradise...
 
I had this idea about mounting the pcb inside a chassis with the tubes exposed out of the top plate, but then I realized that the heatsinks and tall capacitor would prevent me from mounting the board right up to underside of the top plate.

I had two ideas to overcome this, and I'm wondering which one makes more sense.
My initial thought was that I could get chassis mount tube sockets, and run wires down from them to the pins on the PCB. Would this be a bad idea? I guess I'm thinking from a noise perspective.. Like would having say 1" straight wires from the PCB to tube socket pins induce some unwanted noise?

The other thing I thought of is mounting the IC's / Heatsinks and large capacitor on the bottom of the PCB, of course making sure that the pinouts are correct for those components. I don't think I see an issue doing this, but then I suppose heat from the heatsinks would rise straight up into the PCB.

The other issue with both of these options is that it makes the top of the board somewhat inaccessible.. I thought too about mounting the tube sockets to the underside of the PCB, so that the whole PCB top side is visible with the chassis upsidedown if I need to access anything. But PCB mount sockets would have the pinout backwards then wouldn't they..? I could also use the chassis mount tube socket idea with the board upside down in the chassis, but then I would be dealing with lead wires again, and with the board upside down I'd be crossing wires to some extent to get the pinout right..

Anyways, I haven't started building yet, and I'm just wondering if anyone has gone down this path yet, or has any ideas.
 
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I believe the board was designed to do just what you want to do. There are a couple of small components that have to be mounted "up" along with the valves...

Take a look through this thread and the preceding thread in "group buys" for this.

There are photos...
 
I believe the board was designed to do just what you want to do. There are a couple of small components that have to be mounted "up" along with the valves...

Take a look through this thread and the preceding thread in "group buys" for this.

There are photos...

Oh.. My bad.. For some reason I thought the tube sockets were mounted on the same side as the heatsinks, etc.. I see now "For exposed valves, populate the bottom."

On another note, Any thoughts on using this Antek 175V power transformer AS-1T175 - 100VA 175V Transformer - AnTek Products Corp (way higher VA than required, but not a bad price).

And then this second Antek 9-0-9V transformer AS-1209 - 100VA 9V Transformer - AnTek Products Corp (also higher VA than required, but keeps the VAC output of the secondaries closer to 9.5-0-9.5 because of the light load (based on the datasheet info).
 
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Oh.. My bad.. For some reason I thought the tube sockets were mounted on the same side as the heatsinks, etc.. I see now "For exposed valves, populate the bottom."

On another note, Any thoughts on using this Antek 175V power transformer AS-1T175 - 100VA 175V Transformer - AnTek Products Corp (way higher VA than required, but not a bad price).

And then this second Antek 9-0-9V transformer AS-1209 - 100VA 9V Transformer - AnTek Products Corp (also higher VA than required, but keeps the VAC output of the secondaries closer to 9.5-0-9.5 because of the light load (based on the datasheet info).
The original spec was for 9v, so it will be fine...we only upped it a bit for the MK3, so you should fine
 
The original spec was for 9v, so it will be fine...we only upped it a bit for the MK3, so you should fine

Also I noticed that the BOM calls for 0-175V for the HV transformer, but I see originally people talking about 0-165V.

The Antek one I'm looking at is 0-181V unloaded, and 0-168V @ 0.56A.. So I would imagine @ 0.1A I would be closer to 175-180V.. Think that is okay?