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Hovland HP-100: Success with vibration control

Wondering if anyone has had particularly good success in two areas of vibration control with the Hovland HP-100 preamp. One is vibration control for the entire unit such as cones. Another is vibration control of the tubes. Or maybe, as so often is the case, on paper it seems like you will get differences but on listening you notice no difference or can not reliably tell the difference. By the way, maybe the non-remote preamps, like the HP-100, should be made part of the solution of the national obesity epidemic. :-D
nanderson
jfrech's avatar
jfrech
1,816 posts
 
I can't comment on your Hovland, but I can say that anything under my BAT preamp and phono stage makes real difference. I've tried the Black Diamond Racing cones, the DH Cones and Squares and Symposium Rollerblocks and Symposium shelves.

I personally like the Symposium stuff the best. It's an immediate boost-all over. You may just have to try one or two things...
czapp's avatar
czapp
126 posts
 
I use a Townsend Seismic Sink under my HP-100.
I found that it improved transparency, and tightened up the bass as well. I had tried some BDR products - Cones and shelves - but they tended to thin things out. I've never had any sucess with vibration controls that raise a component off of it's footings.
All tweaks are system dependent, so it's worth trying out many different options.
Good Luck
Carl
troutfishing
21 posts
 
vibration is the least of the Hovlands problems, how about quality control, both of the units I owned went back to the factory for noise. I could never rid the units of a certain murky quality no matter what other components were used with them
nanderson OP
291 posts
 
Trout, what do you mean by murky quality? Some early versions of the HP-100 are reported to have a low level noise issue that was there before music was playing but could not be discerned when music was playing. After recognizing this issue, Hovland shortly later, resolved it in the few units it was present.
nanderson OP
291 posts
 
PS: Forgot to mention my Hovland is quite as a tomb in Antarctica and that is saying something given I have 94db efficient speakers that would pick up the smallest traces of background noise! I am currently using a FIM Gold PC on the Hovland.
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