The high octane phono preamp

Yes the webmaster did an update yesterday and now response is very slow! My apologies, we're working to get it resolved, should be OK in a few hours.

Jan

No apologies necessary, Jan. a) I'm retired, and have all the time in the world, and, b) it was $1.13 for something of great value. Just wanted others to be aware that, however slow, the process did work.
 
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If anybody is interested on getting the original Hitachi 2SC2547, you can try Amazon.com marketplace. There's one vendor (utsource) selling them in packs of 5, 10 or 20. Free shipping as well. I ordered a pack of 10 units for $5.33.
Of course, I can't tell right now if there're the real thing or fakes. This vendor has quite a good feeback, though. Let's cross fingers. :D

I sent for a set of these as well. At that price, not much at stake...like you said, pretty good ratings...fingers crossed!

Russellc
 
Hi everybody,

currently almost all boards are gone and I'm still contacting people that pm'ed me on October, 7!

I'm really very sorry for everybody that mailed me later as there won't be a board left for you. Of course I will respond to every pm even if only to bring the bad news.

I never expected such an interest and feel honored by the pm bombardment!

I will try to get a cheap quote for a 2nd run of boards. Let's see if I can get up with something.

BTW, the regulator LED is pretty critical as it directly sits on the opamp input ;)

@atupi: I glad to hear you got the board already! I would use the higher hfe BC part.

As no loading resistors are installed i was thinking to install only 2 cap loading and on the other 2 positions to install two resistors.

The high octane is ideally suited as MM-phono preamp with its low capacitance bjt-inputs and 46dB gain. Of course you can also use it with medium output MCs and use load resistors. Or even combine it with a nice step-up transformer...
 
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Regarding the use of the Hight Octane pre with a low output MC cartridge plus step-up transformer, I wonder what would be the optimal capacitance load. I suppose it depends on the specific model of cartridge/step up trafo, but manufacturers usually don't give reccomended values, because MC carts are supposedly much more tolerant to capacitance loads. Nevertheless .. what do you think, guys ?
 
Most of MM cartridges wants to "see" 47k on the preamp input. In this case R1 is 100k, Is a good move to replace R1 with the recommended value of cartridge manufacturer?

Please note that R1 is parallel to the bipolar transistor Q1, which reduces input impedance strongly. A BJT is very different from a jfet, for which your calculation would be fine.

With Q1 installed the input impedance is about 47kR as intended.