Hello Larryi:
I just received a reply from Alex Crespi @ Uptone Audio. He advised that a shop called New York Audio Repair be contacted as they know the HP-100 preamp inside and out. Thanks very much for that bit of info.
Cheers!
RW
Hovland HP-100 Preamp - Anybody Have Bob Hovland's Contact Info? Thx! :)
Hello A-Goners!
I am reaching out to the Audiogon collective in request of Bob Hovland's current contact information. I recently bought a late production Hovland HP-100 preamp and it is minimally 15 or so years old, based on the Hovland Company closing its operations in the late 2000's timeframe. I'm interested in having Bob Hovland give the preamp a check-up, replace any parts that are not up to specification, and to perform any of his updates, and improvements on it.
For example, on this HP-100 below, the resistors to the right of the large black colored single electrolytic capacitor located in the left bay, they are completely gone (there should be 2 or 4 resistors there), and in the center bay, it appears the pair of .10 uF capacitors are of Hovland's SuperCap type (black colored cap pair), that replaced the yellow MusiCap the HP-100 came equipped with. For background, I understand that the SuperCap was Hovland's latest capacitor, superceding the MusiCap capacitor.
Well, thank you in advance to you all for any information you have to offer about Bob Hovland's where-abouts. For you fellas who had one of these HP-100s, if you have any tips, improvements such as tube rolling stories, please feel free to post it all here. Thanks again, & have a good day all - cheers.
RW
4 responses Add your response
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I have an HP-100. I rarely use it as I find it excessively colored for my taste, although I enjoyed it for some time. I digitized the output from the line stage and from the "tape" output and they sounded very different, so I spent some time tracking the reason down. The HP-100 uses a surprisingly low current N-FET follower and a tantalum bead cap for the line output. This combination has a very high and very non-linear output impedance and produces lots of even order distortion. The end result is that some music genres and individual recording sound pretty good, but others not so much- as I said a very non-neutral sound. However, swapping out various tubes and hearing the character changing was always fun, if, inevitably, unsatisfying. Hovland’s propensity to use divining rods to select components and other eccentricities was always a source of amusement to me, and indeed some embarrassment as, being a EE, it all seemed a bit too, well, mystical for me to accept. |
I liked Hovland's gear. They delivered quite nice sound. One of the Hovland principals, Alex Crespi, can be found here: https://uptoneaudio.com/pages/about-us
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