john_tracy
Responses from john_tracy
| Tube failure -- what would happen in worst case? Worst case? That so much depends on the design of the circuit in which the tube is being used. In my case I'm burning tubes in extreme DIY amps and preamps. All the tubes, except the output (that's on the drawing board) have current source fed,shu... | |
| Boron Cantilever and Ruby Cantilever, Why Ruby? Lewm, Beryllium has an atomic number of 4, Boron 5; hardly qualifies either as "heavy" metals. As to the toxicity of Boron compounds, borax is used as a detergent booster and boric acid as an eye wash and a "safe" insecticide. | |
| Phonostage It's a little over your budget, but worth the stretch. Kevin Carter is selling a beta "Venice" on eBay for $8K. Fully differential, tube hybrid; makes the K&K "Maxed Out" sound like a toy in comparison. You can read a review of the Sonas Verit... | |
| Benz Micro Ruby Z Vs Shelter 7000 - Mini Review I'm in the process of having my Shelter 9000 retipped by Peter Lederman at The Soundsmith. It will be interesting to hear what the differences will be with a polished line contact diamond. You might consider having your Shelter retipped. At $450 i... | |
| surface noise and cartridge/ phono pre questions "First, attempting to address vinyl clicks and pops by adjusting cartridge loading (or any other setup parameter) is fundamentally unsound."If improper loading results in a high frequency resonance (for example loading a MM cart. with too much cap... | |
| Need advise on Oscilloscope A scope will let you check for phase differences between channels. Cross talk and phase differences should be at minimum at the same point, but only if the cartridge is perfect. Good ones are close, but there are duds out there. In any case the sc... | |
| $2500 Phono Stage Suggestions If you went with the K&K you could forgo the MC input transformers for now and save about $400 for the LL1931s. They could be added later if you decide to go with a MC. | |
| Origin Live Linear Flow 2 Rewire I had my OL Illustrious rewired; however, since I also upgraded to a MkIIIC with carbon tube and dual pivot bearings at the same time I can't parse out the difference due to the wire. It does sound better. Especially in the lower mids were it seem... | |
| Benz cartridge phase? One fly in the ointment here. Even if your system maintains correct polarity, recorded media doesn't. Many vinyl LPs and even some CDs are recorded in inverted polarity. Mostly it's the older LPs, but I've had some recent issues that were inverted... | |
| Biasing your Tubes to your Room By what I've read so far I assume that there is no provision to balance the tubes in the PP pair. After a year of use one tube could be weaker than the other creating a situation where one tube will hog more of the current. You should check the in... | |
| Nottingham spacedeck motor - driving me crazy One other thing to check: due to its weight, the motor sometimes will slip down in its pod over time. When that happens, the grooves on the pulley no longer line up with the grooves on the platter. | |
| better phono stage You could probably get Kevin to build you a Maxed Out K&K for around $3K. | |
| Nottingham spacedeck motor - driving me crazy 45 RPM is harder for the motor to pull than 33 1/3, like trying to get your car moving in 2nd gear instead of first. If it will work at 45, the problem is not the motor. | |
| Phono preamp comparison: Herron vs. K&K Jb0194, I'm using the circuit in the Sonus DAC's active output to do double duty as a DAC output and a line stage. Two pairs of resistors do the I/V conversion and a pair of relays connects to the passive attenuator and the grids of the 6N6P gain ... | |
| Phono preamp comparison: Herron vs. K&K The best phono stage out there is Kevin's new 3 stage, transformer coupled, differential series feed design. ;~) Unfortunately for us, the last I heard the projected retail was $18K. Fortunately for me I snapped up one of the beta versions when th... |