Which active pre-amp for a F5?

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I am in the process of starting to assemble my first DIY amp, the F5, and would like
to feed it with an active pre, to make sure i have enough total gain.

Is the Aleph 1.7 active? and a good match to a F5?.
I intend to have the Pearl 2 in the same chassis as the pre-amp.
Does this pose a problem?, with good isolation between pre and phono
and, the psu or psu's?...
Speaking of psu's, could i use a secondary winding to power up the pre,
and the other secondary to power-up the Pearl ?.
I know they use different voltages.
Yet another stupid question: does the Pearl's have RIAA corection for a
MC cartridge?.
Sorry i'm a newbee 😛

Pierre
 
The F5 is a very quiet amplifier -- I would suggest the BF862 JFET design on the Synaesthesia website (I miss his posts, but he did appear in LinearAudio) for MC -- lower the gain, etc., etc. if you need a line amp. I am having a very irritating time with servos in low level stages, so would cap couple the HPS5.

If you can source the P-Channel JFETs then the Borbely "All FET" complementary line amplifier is extremely low noise, and very low distortion. At 20dB gain you should be able to drive the F5 to its max out with no problems. (The F5 itself is 15.6dBG).
 
In order of your questions -

-Yes.
-Most likely.
-No problem, in fact, a good idea.
-The PSU needs to be in a separate box for best noise performance, basically there will be two PSU side by side in a common box
-No, the Pearl 2 uses a (V+,0, V-) supply, the 1.7 is just (V+,0) The pearl needs two secondaries all by itself.
-Yes, the Pearl 2 can use MC cartridge, in fact, it is designed for it. RIAA eq. doesn't change with MM and MC, only the amount of gain.
 
You might want to consider juma's BF862 preamp, from this forum. I've been very pleased with it with the F5...
This will only be good for line-level though, I guess, phono would need some other solution.

Cheers

Nigel
 
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@turboyam 🙂

I just heard the Borbely "Super Buffer" ( that is not the Borbely pre jackinnj mentioned) and the BA-3. The Borbely may have the better presentation of room and focuses the attention more on the rhythm , the BA-3 sounds more "natural" and with a bit more body, so I hear more the melody of the songs...

Both have a similar high gain... :spin:
 
Thanks guys, i will assemble the F5 and try my sources on it and see the
db output i have and then, decide if i go active or passive.
All my sources have volume pots on them except the phono.
The speakers the F5 will be driving will be around 96db/w so...
 
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