• WARNING: Tube/Valve amplifiers use potentially LETHAL HIGH VOLTAGES.
    Building, troubleshooting and testing of these amplifiers should only be
    performed by someone who is thoroughly familiar with
    the safety precautions around high voltages.

Curcio Daniel

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OPINION

I do not like the Daniels.

Too many of the same tube one after the other... cumulation of the same sonic imprint... and not the best, at that (the ECC88 family is not the favorite among audiophiles, with good reason).

The design choices in the Daniels are worlds apart from what I stand for. And, all the Daniels I heard were, without insult, inferior.
 
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I've never been a fan of mixing solid state and tubes with the exception of the occasional LED for bias and CCS for loading. I've worked on a number of ARC amplifiers and op-amps floating off of high voltage supplies seem to be a recipe for headaches to put it mildly. A couple of really big line transients such as from a distant lightning strike and voila ~ out comes the magic smoke. :devilr:

I've not heard a Daniel so I won't comment on the sonics, I do remember long ago thinking I might want to build one.. Never happened once I started to design my own kit.

Like RE604 I really like the D3A and have designed a somewhat similar phono stage around the D3A as the front end and a 5842 as the output. Loads are tube based gyrators which seem to work well enough..
 
Hi

"I've never been a fan of mixing solid state and tubes"

What do you think about "Nagra" preamps ?

Is it worth to spend 10K$...

Thanks
 

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They are very pretty :devilr: Circuitry design relatively uninspired, gorgeous build quality... But I have not heard one.. Personally $10K would buy an awful lot of very exotic components for a serious assault on a SOTA diy design. Even if I were permitted to spend that kind of money on a single component I would not do it, except perhaps for a used Meitner SACD player...
 
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I have been thinking of refurbishing my Daniel 1 and was thinking of upgrading the power supply. Does the value of the caps in the h/v supply have any bearing on the voltage output[ it being a voltage doubler]. Any advice/ recommendations would be much appreciated.
Marra
 
Re Powersupply

Hi i uprated my powersupply. i got rid of the voltage doubler and added another tier of HT regulation in the outboard PS box, this prior to the onboard regulators.

The heaters were also pre regulated prior to entering the main preamp chassis.

This did make a slight though not massive difference to the percieved performance.

Cheers
 

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Thanks for the response. As you probably gathered from my original post my electronics knowledge is somewhat limited; I can build things and am ultra careful with wiring and safety measures but lack the know how to design stuff. Is there any chance of posting or pming schematics for your upgrades.
 
Hi That preamp is a long time gone from my hands i am afraid, and i dont have a schematic to hand.

I think just replaceing the original voltage doubler circuit with a full wave bridge rectifier and perhaps seperate transformers for heaters and HT, with decent filter caps and perhaps a CRC filter would be an improvement on the original powersupply.

A 240/240V isolation transformer will give you around 340VDC when full wave rectified and smoothed, perhaps add an rc filter after that to remove some ripple and scale the R to match the input voltage to the on board regulator as it is now with the voltage doubler


I will see if i can dig out the original schematic, and offer any more detailed ideas

Cheers.
 
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