• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

Croft Vitale

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#3
The HiFi shop should have the schematic. It comes as a life-size model of the amp, with all the components connected and attached. It's so complete, you don't even need to assemble it yourself. It can be called a "plug-and-play" schematic.
 
#5
There doesn't seem to be a list of historical Croft products, but on the Croft website there is an archive of reviews that include the Vitale - perhaps some useful information might be gleaned, but there is no schematic.

Given that Glen Croft has always taken pride in the simplicity of his circuits, I suspect that the innards of the preamps don't vary much from the original Micro series, which included a decent phono stage and a unity-gain line stage. The more you paid, the better the PSU and the more regulation of the HT rails.

Alex
 
#6
When I obtained my c.1980's Vitale I contacted Glen to obtain a copy of the manual and any other relevant info. He said that he lost all information on these older models - I can't recall the reason, it may have been due to a fire or similar.
 
#7
some images I receive today from the owner of the model "VITA"
 

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#8
My guess is that this was a short-lived model, as there is very little on it on the Net, and I certainly have never heard of it. The internal layout is similar to a typical Croft design, but the case style is quite unusual. It certainly looks quite a basic model, as there is no sign of HT regulation, which he added higher up the range.

The valves look like octal-base types (6SL7/6SN7). Glen certainly used these on at least one occasion (I heard them in a Super Micro A in around 1990), though he normally designed around 12AX7/12AU7 or similar.

Here is a discussion of this on the Art of Sound forum .

Alex
 
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#10
The Vitale I have from the 1980's has three valves (so is different to the latter Vita series). I don't know how much my Vitale (with rounded brass knobs and a black textured front) differs from the latter series (with cylidrical knobs with flat ends, and woodgrain front).



My Vitale's three valves are:
Line (x1) Mullard 12AT7WA [aka ECC81]
Phono (x2) 6201 “ aka ECC83”


My Vitale dates from the earlier days of the internet, so I'm not surprised that there is not much info surviving on these amps.


 
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