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    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
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    the safety precautions around high voltages.

valve preamp criticisms?

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whaddya think?
 

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Criticisms:

1. ECC82
2. ECC82
3. ECC82
4. Cathode follower
5. Cap coupled
6. Sand in PSU
7. It just can't compete with a good passive if gain or impedance matching is not an issue.
8. Not even the 'finest silver RCA' will help it
 
Hi,

Yet another preamp that nobody really needs.

If you want to experiment and learn what valves are all about why waste the opportunity by throwing in all that semi-conductor trash?

I'm afraid I'll have to agree with Analog_SA's analysis.

Steve Eddy still hasn't caught up on tubes yet either so what else is new?:smash:

You want a preamp?
You want a little gain?
Reasonable output impedance?
Not too expensive?
Sound you won't believe was possible?

Get yourself a pair of 12B4A's and build Brett's little circuit, it's in the forum's archives and probably has been mentioned in the recent 12B4A thread by Mark Gulbrandsen.

Oh, pay attention to the PS.
Not a single circuit sounds better than its PS.

Thank us later, 😉
 
Hey analog_sa what is your idea of a good preamp? Don't even mention passive because "passive preamp" makes absolutely no sense. A passive preamp is a volume control, or for people with money to burn 100 holco resistors and a huge wafer switch. Whats wrong with a cathode follower? Whats wrong with cap coupled? Whats wrong with an LED for bias voltage? Merely dismissing everything without reason isn't the way to go.

Adam
 
Hello Adam!

astouffer said:
Hey analog_sa what is your idea of a good preamp? Don't even mention passive because "passive preamp" makes absolutely no sense. A passive preamp is a volume control, or for people with money to burn 100 holco resistors and a huge wafer switch.

I agree absolutely. Useful ones are transformer based.

astouffer said:
Whats wrong with a cathode follower?

Poor linearity and poor Zout when poorly implemented.Please note that most CD players have a Zout of 10ohm or less, so a pre has to have low Zout. If not, it's completely useless or probably even bad.

astouffer said:
Whats wrong with cap coupled?

If it can be done without, why not? Capacitors are nonlinear.

astouffer said:
Whats wrong with an LED for bias voltage?

Naaah... to many nonlinearities. I don't trust sand 😉
 
Am I allowed to say ...

... I like LED's in the cathode? You DO NEED to be sure they are passing enough current to avoid non-linearities.

Can't remeber now properly, I think M. Jones showed somewhere the great performances cheap red led's can offer (not mentioning here his book).

Ciao
Gianluca
 
Giaime said:
Poor linearity and poor Zout when poorly implemented.

With that qualifier, you could say that about virtually everything.

Please note that most CD players have a Zout of 10ohm or less, so a pre has to have low Zout.

Sure you didn't leave out a zero? Most CD players I've researched have had output impedances of 100 ohms and higher. Not 10 ohms and less.

se
 
I will be very calm on this one, starting 2006 in a GOOD spirit (er - I mean of the mind!)

The anode load resistor is not given in the initial circuit, so one can hardly express an opinion regarding linearity etc. (LED bias does appear to be somewhat low, however, for an ECC82.) Then I am beginning to wonder exactly what all this criticism of an ECC82 per se is - excuse me, but it surely depends on the circuit?? It is as far as I know (which comes all of 50+ years) a good triode with a mu of about 18. The 12B4 is offered as an alternative - with a mu of 6.5! (at least according to the RCA Tube Manual). That will make a different pre-amplifier. I presume if someone uses an ECC82 he wants a gain of about 13, and likewise for all the other contenders in the marketplace, each according to their ability.

Regards.
 
Johan Potgieter said:
Then I am beginning to wonder exactly what all this criticism of an ECC82 per se is - excuse me, but it surely depends on the circuit??

Morgan Jones presented some measurements of what he called the "irreducible distortion" of a range of medium mu triodes in sufficient quantities to have statistical merit. These measurements were done with a current source load so that linearity is maximized. The ECC82s fared quite poorly compared with other similar tubes.

Happy New Year, Johan!
 
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