Little bear tube phono preamp - anyone has it?

[Tankpopper]

Hey guys

i saw this little guy online:

Little Bear Tube Valve Stereo Phono Turntable RIAA Preamp Preamplifier Amplifier | eBay

and was wondering if anyone tried it yet.. i guess ill order it anyway and give my input on it later, but i hoped some one allready tried it.

what do you think?

[hongrn]

This is the one I have. Very Quiet, and I like the sound very much. Just look for "6N3 Tube Preamp" on eBay.

[sled108]

This looks Very Interesting...It would appear to be Quite a Deal...I wonder how it Sounds...

[Consty]

Originally Posted by Tankpopper

Hey guys

i saw this little guy online:

Little Bear Tube Valve Stereo Phono Turntable RIAA Preamp Preamplifier Amplifier | eBay

and was wondering if anyone tried it yet.. i guess ill order it anyway and give my input on it later, but i hoped some one allready tried it.

what do you think?

Hi Tankpopper,

Mine just arrived last week.
It had the bottom perspex plate kind of cracked probably due to mechanical stress during shipping.
The seller seems very kind and promised to send another one.
Do not expect a schematic inside. There is none. He sent me by email a pdf but it's full of mistakes. I manually extracted the schematic and will post it soon.
It sounds pretty good for the money. I don't have professional equipment to test the RIAA curve response.
The one and only thing that you MUST do is SHIELDING!
I covered all the electronics and the first tube in aluminum foil and now I can turn my 100W amplifier to max with Little-Bear phono preamp connected and it's (almost) dead silent . I'll post a photo soon.

[Consty]

My shielded Little-Bear

[hifidelity909]

Hello Tanktopper,

Just received the Little Bear tube phono preamp. Assembly was fairly easy based on the pics, however not sure if I have the blue/black wires in the right connectors. Overall it sounds pretty good but I'm getting slight hum (with ground connected). Do you have schematic you could forward, post or send to me? Also, I tried loading your shielded pic above, it just hangs. Would love to see and or hear any tweaks you did on this unit. Thanks!

[sled108]

Check this out....
Little Bear Tube Phono Pre?? - AudioKarma.org Home Audio Stereo Discussion Forums

[jerrys]

I don't know what the deal is with hum with preamp tube circuits. I built tube type electronic crossover and just couldn't get the hum problem whipped. I altered the circuit to take JFETs instead of tubes. No more hum and it sounded better. I understand the fascination with tubes and one can be forgiven for thinking that tubes are ALWAYS better, but I have found JFETs do a better job with the low-level audio. Tubes are noisy. The signal coming from a turntable is tiny. It is going to be problematic to say the least amplifying that tiny signal without tube noise being audible. JFETs would do the job much better, have more gain, sound like tubes anyway, and have WAY less noise.

[plexi0]

trying to set up this new version of the bear and am getting no music, just a bit of hum and it seems the little gz4 tube is not lit up. the other three 12ax7's are lit....any ideas?

Little Bear T10 Pro Tube Valve Phono Turntable RIAA Preamp Preamplifier Ver2 5 | eBay

[vinylkid58]

Originally Posted by plexi0

trying to set up this new version of the bear and am getting no music, just a bit of hum and it seems the little gz4 tube is not lit up. the other three 12ax7's are lit....any ideas?

Check rectifier pins 3 & 4 for voltage. If you get a voltage reading, then most likely the tube is a dud, if it's not lighting up.

Originally Posted by jerrys

I don't know what the deal is with hum with preamp tube circuits.

This particular design is very prone to hum, which is well documented in the AK thread.

jeff