john curl said:
John is correct. Several years ago Roederstein changed the coating because the old coating required a chemical process that was not RoHS compliant. We did listening tests and found no change in the sound. Last year they changed production from the Draloric factory to the Beyschlag factory. Despite assurances from Vishay that there were no changes whatsoever, the sound of the resistors changed noticeably. I don't like them quite as well as before, but they are still excellent resistors and the best value for the money.
GRollins said:
As Jacco noted, the original spelling is "Röderstein", with an umlaut over the "o". A few years ago Germany started to shift away from using the umlaut as most countries don't have that character on their keyboard. So officially an "ö" is now spelled as "oe". (I probably have some of this wrong, so all Germans are free to correct me on this point.)
From Wikipedia:
"When typing German, if umlaut letters are not available, the proper way is to replace them with the underlying vowel and a following <e>. So, for example, "Schröder" becomes "Schroeder". As the pronunciation differs greatly between the normal letter and the umlaut, simply omitting the dots is considered incorrect."
Where it causes the most trouble is when doing internet searches. I don't know how Google (for instance) handles these issues. If you want information on the Schröder tonearm, should I search for "Schröder" or "Schroder" or "Schroeder". And even if Google considers some of those variants as equivalents, who knows how the various websites have chosen to spell the word? I guess the safest way would be to search for "Schröder OR Schroder OR Schroeder". It's just a pain because it takes extra time to input the "ö" on an American keyboard.
Looking thru the Vishay datasheets, I'm still having trouble trying to figure out which Vishay product you are calling the "new" Roederstein. The closest I could come up with are these MBB0207s. Are these them?
Mr Fletch Hansen,
actually it's the other way around.
The German speakers pronounce it like that, as a result they often write the name as they speak.
The company has been Vishay owned since '93, but the original name is indeed Roederstein.
More confusion is/was added because the MK-3 and MK-8 types were originally called WK-3/WK-8
It's nice to see the status of the MK-3 confirmed by big time experts.
Pardon for asking, but just how big do those 30-weight Shallco attenuators end up after the R-C modification ?
actually it's the other way around.
The German speakers pronounce it like that, as a result they often write the name as they speak.
The company has been Vishay owned since '93, but the original name is indeed Roederstein.
More confusion is/was added because the MK-3 and MK-8 types were originally called WK-3/WK-8
It's nice to see the status of the MK-3 confirmed by big time experts.
Pardon for asking, but just how big do those 30-weight Shallco attenuators end up after the R-C modification ?
Pars said:
Yes, those are the ones. For comparison here is a Roederstein data sheet from 2001. Note that the parts were from Draloric instead of Beyschlag. There were more sizes available, as well as more choices of tempcos. The nomenclature included both the original "MK" naming as well as the "SMA" naming. But even then the "MK-3" series had been discontinued.
jacco vermeulen said:
Here is a link to a photo:
http://blog.stereophile.com/ces2008/011008wow/
From the rear going forwards, there are three circuit boards for each channel. The rear-most has the input connectors and input selector switch (also a Shallco), next comes the audio PCB, then comes the variable gain PCB (not an attenuator). In front of that is black metal mounting plate. Between the plate and the variable gain PCB are the pulleys and belts. In front of the mounting plate are the black stepper motors.
Unless you tell ie Google to do a strict verbatim search (using +"xyz") the german umlauts etc are handled transparently, ä=ae, ö=oe, ü=ue.
But, as noted, quite often the trailing "e" is ommitted on foreign websites etc, so a search Schroeder OR Schroder seems to get more relevant hits.
As for the resistors, MMB MELF's are excellent in my (non-audio) experience, as are the -HF versions of the series.
Riedon/Powertron make some excellent precision resistors which might be "good enough" for audio.
- Klaus
But, as noted, quite often the trailing "e" is ommitted on foreign websites etc, so a search Schroeder OR Schroder seems to get more relevant hits.
As for the resistors, MMB MELF's are excellent in my (non-audio) experience, as are the -HF versions of the series.
Riedon/Powertron make some excellent precision resistors which might be "good enough" for audio.
- Klaus
KSTR said:
Klaus, thanks very much for the information on the Google searches. I still kind of miss the old days when AltaVista was the king of search engines, simply because they allowed the use of wild-card characters. Google used to be strictly literal and you had to specify "resistor OR resistors" (for example). I think lately they have added some "fuzzy" search characteristics, but without knowing exactly what they are, they aren't so useful.
Regarding the Roederstein (now Beyschlag) MELF resistors, they sound essentially identical to the leaded versions of the same. And they are far superior for audio usage than any of the normal "chip" resistors I tried, including thick-film and thin-film (both nichrome and tantalum nitride). They are also inexpensive and offer great value for the money. The only ones I have found that sound better are the ones we use in our KX-R, but they are $1 each ($4,000 per reel). We needed about 80 values for our preamp, so that was a significant investment....
john curl said:
I know, but it doesn't cost that much more than the Blowtorch...
Gotta keep you honest.
But I think you are keeping us honest, too. I've heard that the JC-2 is insane sounding for $4000. What are you using for a volume control on that?
John, never mind my previous question. There is a photo on the Parasound website showing a motorized 4-gang pot. So now I have a new question. How do you keep the matching between phases with a 4-gang pot?
You have to maintain 1% tracking for just 40 dB CMRR. Most pots only track within 3 dB, best case. That means that the CMRR would only be 3 dB....
You have to maintain 1% tracking for just 40 dB CMRR. Most pots only track within 3 dB, best case. That means that the CMRR would only be 3 dB....
Charles, what do you expect of me for $4000? At first we used the TKD pot, and it was pretty good, but for some reason, Parasound could not get the parts, so we now use Alps. I'm sure that our common mode rejection is not too good. It doesn't matter to me, as I don't use balanced inputs anyway. I think balanced operation is OK, but I would not want to depend on it to get adequate performance.
The CTC cost us 3 thousand dollars just for the boxes. At the end, we tried to raise our prices, but we never got that price very often, because most went to Japan for $10,000 and then they were sold for up to 5 million yen, or about $44,000 in Japan. Someone made some money, but we didn't. We did OK, though, but not well enough to keep going with the preamp. You have the big preamp now.
The CTC cost us 3 thousand dollars just for the boxes. At the end, we tried to raise our prices, but we never got that price very often, because most went to Japan for $10,000 and then they were sold for up to 5 million yen, or about $44,000 in Japan. Someone made some money, but we didn't. We did OK, though, but not well enough to keep going with the preamp. You have the big preamp now.
jacco vermeulen said:
Zen Mod said:
Ah, but again we hit a snag. Translation machines assume that you know what language the word in question originally came from. Having never seen a Roederstein box, which presumably says something to the effect of "Made in Germany," and damned few of the resistors themselves, which say nothing at all, I wouldn't know where to begin. To complicate matters further, the first post comes from someone who lists his location as "Hollanda, beachbum under Rotterdam" and the second "Bac, ex-YU." Neither of which are Germany. Ain't the WWW wonderful?
Charles,
Excepting the cost, where do the Caddock resistors stand compared to the Roederstein? Once I get done with the basic R&D for this amp, I am willing to go back and do a fancier version of the same circuit just to stick in better parts. Given the prices of some of the contenders, I don't mind going cross country to cheat and end up a little bit ahead in the race. They are semi-available and I have a contact at the company (coincidental meshing of the writing and electronics portions of my life). Vishay is less well distributed, but I'm open to the idea. Or other brands for that matter.
I'm not obligated to turn a profit on my circuits, so the parts cost simply becomes a question of whether it sounds better or not, coupled with how much nonsense I have to go through to get the parts. I have some financial constraints, but I approach these things on a case by case basis comparing where I am money-wise vs. how many parts are in the circuit vs. what's involved in getting them.
Grey
GRollins said:
Vishay by the way offers their Bulk Metal Foil technology in surface mount devices unless you're needing leaded parts.
se
GRollins said:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heimat
what you can expect from nation which invent "Weltschmerz" (besides other things) , than they are able to make one of the best , whatever these bests are .........
Roe was/is one hell of factory ; they (Leute) just have different feel for quality ....... maybe only Japanese cherish something similar ........
GRollins said:
I've no idea, as I've never listened to them. The Caddock resistors seem to be made for very specialized purpose that are not usually suitable for general purpose audio electronics.
For example, take the leaded MS series parts. First of all, they use a "Micronox" resistive element, whatever the heck that is. They say that it is fired directly on the core. To me that sounds almost like a thick-film process. The thick-film surface mount resistors I've listened to sound pretty darned bad. The "ox" part of "Micronox" implies some sort of oxide. I've never heard anyone claim that metal oxide resistors sound better than metal film resistors, so that's another reason to hesitate. Next, the end caps are nickel. While this may or may not be better than steel, it is still a magnetic material. And the leads are also nickel plated. But finally, the resistance values only go down to 20 ohms. There are plenty of times when I want values lower than that.
The MK series seems to be a bit more reasonable. They don't have the nickel and they can go as low as 1 ohm. They still use "Micronox", which may be a wonderful thing or a terrible thing. But it looks like they cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 to $5 each. That is too much for anything but the most expensive commercial products. For many years we didn't build products that expensive. That market segment was dominated by Levinson, and it would have been foolish to try and go head-to-head with them. Now that they have imploded we are introducing some more expensive products. But I would be surprised if the Caddocks sounded enough better than our current resistors to justify the added expense.
But you never know, I could be wrong...
Sorry for the very late posting on this. I thought I had posted it earlier, but obviously not.
The metal can packages typically have hermetic seals. This apparently requires the use of steel (copperweld) leads. On the other hand, the plastic packages have tinned copper leads. In my experience steel leads noticeably degrade the sound of a component. However these experiments were largely done with capacitors and resistors.
On the other hand, the metal package has a solid material only underneath the die, while a plastic package surrounds the die entirely. So I can offer two possibilities:
a) The sonic differences you noted are a result of the steel leads actually degrading the sound and would probably result in a reversal of preference by a different listener and/or a different system.
b) The lack of a solid material touching the die in the metal package changes the sound for the better.
The only other data point I have on this topic comes from Jeff Rowland. When he switched from (steel cased and steel leaded) TO-3 output devices to plastic power packages with tinned copper leads, he felt that the plastic parts sounded better.
lumanauw said:
The metal can packages typically have hermetic seals. This apparently requires the use of steel (copperweld) leads. On the other hand, the plastic packages have tinned copper leads. In my experience steel leads noticeably degrade the sound of a component. However these experiments were largely done with capacitors and resistors.
On the other hand, the metal package has a solid material only underneath the die, while a plastic package surrounds the die entirely. So I can offer two possibilities:
a) The sonic differences you noted are a result of the steel leads actually degrading the sound and would probably result in a reversal of preference by a different listener and/or a different system.
b) The lack of a solid material touching the die in the metal package changes the sound for the better.
The only other data point I have on this topic comes from Jeff Rowland. When he switched from (steel cased and steel leaded) TO-3 output devices to plastic power packages with tinned copper leads, he felt that the plastic parts sounded better.
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