Supratek Owners Thread


Greetings All - 
It appears that the 26-million-plus view, multi-decade "Preamp Deal of the Century" Supratek thread has been removed. I'm not sure why, but suppose there must be a reasonable explanation.
In any case, on that thread I recently asked whether there might be interest in a "Supratek owners thread" and received some interest. 
The purpose of this thread is for Supratek owners to share the details of their system, ask questions, share information about any tube-rolling they have done, and so forth.
I'll kick us off here with a few details about my system -
ancient Linn LP12 with Ittok arm, Dynavector 17D3 cartridge into Cortese LCR phono stage
Power amp is a fully serviced Innersound Electrostatic amplifier
Quad ESL63 speakers (not USA monitors) or JBL 4430 studio monitors
Digital sources are immature and evolving - ancient Fostex CR300 cd player/burner
DacMagic 100 DAC
Nordost Blue Heaven 75ohm interconnect
Due to the fairly long lengths of speaker wire required in the new listening room, speaker wire is Belden 12 gauge wire designed for low-voltage outdoor lighting systems. 
Next steps - dedicated circuit, new power cords, new interconnects, new wires.
128x128markusthenaimnut
My particular 101D Cabernet unit has not a small noise from the power supply. The HT lines had about 20mV p-p ripple and the DHT filament DC supplies had the same amount. It was a scary to work on the power supply so I decided to work on the main unit. Fortunately after removing the remote control PCB which I never use, it has space for me to put in a 5H choke and a 80uF film cap on each of the HT lines. I made use of the empty cans and put in a 18mH choke and 10000uF for the DC filament supplies. The circuit seems to be a constant current supply for filament with a LM317 which had about 20mVp-p ripple. After the mod which does not touch the signal circuit, I cannot measure the ripples with my equipment. The 2nd, 3rd, etc harmonics of the power supply noise are all gone. The SNR improved by 16dB and I cannot barely hear the annoying humming noise from the speakers. There's still a stubborn 60Hz noise from the FFT which I suspect is coming from the cathode which is from another DC regulator. But now I'm quite happy with the results.

Like @jslateiv said the sweet spot is around 8-10 o'clock of the volume knob to get minimal distortion, mostly consisting of 2nd harmonics. The gain I got was about -6dB to 0dB. 
Ok Guys, I spoke too soon about the hum being caused by the tubes. I bought a new set to tubes Tung Sol 6SN7GTB and hum is back. The previous tubes where all this started were Psvane 6SN7 Treasure MKII. Now the strange part is the 6SN7 tubes that Mick sent me do not hum. I have asked Mick if the preamp, he sent me, takes only one make and model of tubes. @jslateiv as you can see from my post I do not think its the gain issue. I could be wrong but lets see where this goes. 
Did you clean the pins on the new tubes? Also new tubes can be noisy at the beginning.