Herron VTPH-2

Without a doubt, the TFK ECC83 is one of the truly great tubes of audio. It transformed my vintage Quicksilver preamplifier, too.  I have four of them in my stash since the 1970s. I use one each in the phono and linestages.  (The Q uses one half of each dual triode per channel, for stereo.)  You guys have me just about convinced that I need to try a VTPH2.  The circuit and the construction look like nothing special, but this may be a case where the whole is much greater than the sum of the parts.  (Actually, the Quicksilver full function preamplifier that I am using in my second system also fits that description.)

It's just my nature to want to understand "why".  I am well aware that this unit has its diehard devotees, and I do respect the love affair.  But can anyone communicate why technically this unit should be so exceptional?  There are oodles of phono stages that use 12AX7s and 12AT7s, and many of them are excellent indeed, but why would the Herron be so special?  The power supply is on-board, which has its pluses and minuses, and does not look to be superior to most in its topology.  (Is it choke-loaded, for example?) Inquiring minds, especially those who might purchase the product, want to know. The Herron website, apart from affording some photos, is not very informative on circuit design, parts used, etc. Thanks, and please don't take this as a negative.

As a matter of fact, Al, if YOU like the thing, that alone raises it up in my estimation.  And I quite agree with you; I tend to buy the designer rather than the product, so long as the product passes my own personal smell test.  If you so respect Keith Herron, then that is a point on the positive side of the tally sheet.

A case in point is my vintage Quicksilver full function preamplifier.  I bought it originally because of reasonable cost as a used item, and a long standing "positive" vote of end users.  But at the time, I just wanted something to allow me to start to listen to my Beveridge 2SW speakers, in a second system where I wanted to keep costs down.  Mike Saunders seems to be a lot like Keith Herron in his open-ness and willingness to help his customers, even those using a product he made and sold 30 years ago.  So Mike sent me a schematic of both the PS and the audio circuit.  There are some things about the audio circuit, particularly the line stage section that would not fly today; he used NFB, for one thing. But this does result in a very low output impedance that actually is helpful because I am driving a solid stage electronic crossover which feeds a woofer amplifier AND the Beveridge amplifiers, which have a solid state input stage preceded by a high pass filter, in parallel.  After falling in love with the Bevs, I decided they merited a "better" preamplifier and took the Q out of service to be used as a spare. I was even going to sell it.  But for fun I replaced the RIAA capacitors with Russian SSG silver mica types and the output coupling capacitors with really good polystyrenes that I had lying around.  This made a huge improvement.  So did Telefunkens, and finally, once I saw where this was going, so did Vcap CuTfs as couplers between the two stages of the linestage.  I also replaced a few electrolytics that were showing their age, but I decided not to touch the basic topology, even though I was tempted to remove the NFB loop, on the premise that Mike Saunders knows what he is doing better than I do.  All of this made for great sound, superior to either of two preamplifiers that were purchased to supplant the Q.