philodox

So... I gave proper advice about vinyl? This day is getting really weird. \

Happy Thanksgiving! A little late for me though.

Yeah, but what you don't see in my avatar is the hands holding him down. His mom is a bit more docile and didn't require such drastic measures. Feel free to LOLcat any of these pics, my wife would love it.

I'd love to. For what it's worth, I've definately heard the positive effects power conditioning can have... just have yet to hear the negatives I guess. Cables definately make a difference, no question there. Well, when I used my UPC-200 with my Lavry DAC, it turned it from a DAC1 [bleh] to a high end source. The positive difference was staggering. I've still yet to try taking it out of the loop with my current source, but I'll let you know once I do. I have tried my amp straight into the wall and out of the UPC-200 and it sounds identical either way... so I just leave it hooked up to the UPC-200 for convenience. It has a dual zone mode where the source and amp are on separate circuits.

I thought that the high gain and low gain settings on phono stages were to match it to different cartridges? If there is hiss in high gain, couldn't you just... leave it in low gain???

Is underwood one of those mod companies that just throws transformers on the output? I'd have a hard time shelling out cash for one of those types of mods... especially if I had built my own Blue Hawaii.

Yeah, but he's wrong. Not sure, Earl would probably know. Attenuates the preamp signal? You are trying to use it as a preamp and a headphone amp at the same time? Why? It could be the value of the pot as well. Peter had a 25K pot in mine originally. When I moved to the 50K Singlepower stepped attenuator the noise went way down. Sounds like you've done some good work there. My amp was 'missing' some resistors to ground on the 6CG7, which we put in. Could have caused biasing issues according to KG. One of the tube sockets was a little flakey, so we resoldered all the pins. We replaced the two terrible 'stepped attenuators' that Peter had in there with the 4-gang singlepower switch. I think that is basically it, other than the new wooden faceplate of course. The amp sounded pretty good right off the bat, though you had to wiggle the tube in that flakey socket to get some distortion to go away in one of the channels. There was also some grain/noise at higher volumes. After making these changes it has been rock solid, no noise, and the sonics have improved a fair bit. At some point I still want to open her up again and do some work on the power supply. Peter uses a mass of stacked diodes rather than a simple bridge rectifier for some reason, and we should replace that to prevent meltdown. I'd love to do a complete rebuild, but just haven't had the time.

Never heard it, but I'd get the ZD as well.

Just checked, and in the pics there are 23 resistors per bank, 4 banks. So I guess it is a series just like the new goldpoints. Oh well, it sounds great, maybe that blurb about Ladder and Shunt steppers having no real advantage is true. Either way, I'm happy with it.

I'm pretty sure they haven't, but that is a good point.

Yeah, except in this case they are the same but the same. Except that the Ms-Pro looks better and is cheaper in Canada.

Removing power filters is necessity with a linear PSU? I noticed huge differences using my UPC-200 with my Lavry DAC... which has a switcher. I think the Eastsound has a linear power supply. Maybe I should try without? Hmmm...

I thought they sounded pretty near to identical at a recent meet. Looser101, who did in the end decide on buying the Ms-Pro's, agreed. As did the RS-1 owner, Fierce_Freak.

Yeah, Grado's have the S-Paradox.

I'm pretty sure I requested that you be invited by one of the 'big wigs'. Not 100% on that though. Can't remember who invited me though. Anyone remember?

So, if I show you a picture of the Singlepower stepper you'd be able to tell the type? Let me see if I can find one.

I'm glad it sounds good, and I agree that with this type of unit you want it to be on its own and not in a stack. I still think that the tubes could be placed better, but it is a minor 'niggle' as Dusty pointed out. I'm not sure I completely follow your last paragraph. Seemed to go a little Patrick82 from this side of the screen.

Yeah, that would be the way to do it, I think.

I doubt that. Anyone else notice that you need to reach over the tubes to access the XLR jacks? Also, not to be picky, but is it asking too much to not have unfilled holes on the back of your $30,000 modded CD player?

I saw that first bit, but read it as 'Mini-V series', as in the Mini-V series of attenuators. That second bit I did not see. I wonder if the Singlepower stepper I use is series, ladder or shunt? It seems that second quoted paragraph answers your question though, at least from Goldpoints position.

Well, you could always ask him if it would be safe to roll in some 6GU7's [i recommend the RCA 6GU7]. I seem to remember having a conversation with him at some point where he said that you could throw basically any tube in that spot on his circuit. The headphone section isn't bad? What are your complaints? If you are sick of that crappy pot that is in there, I highly recommend a Singlepower stepped attenuator. Made a huge difference in my amp.

The point is that I think it is retarded to have tubes sticking out the back of your CD player. I can't be the only one. How's that?

I don't believe the Goldpoints are series attenuators, what makes you think this?

That APL source looks incredible. I wonder if he would sprout the tubes out of the top rather than the back if you requested it? Any reason that he switched the tubes? All of the designs on his website show 6H30 tubes on the output.

I'd have to hear it to believe it in order to move from my singlepower stepper to something else. The autoformer volume controls intrigue me though.