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Anand, you never cease to amaze. I gotta ask, what does the "Pleasure Control" do?
Good question. When I originally set out building this unit I dreamt of a day when all I had surrounding me was vinyl, i.e., no digital. So I would have ONLY vinyl as my source. The Pleasure Control, is a stepped attenuator based on the K&K Audio's stepped attenuator using SMD resistors. It is about as transparent as Khozmo or DACT, etc...but not quite at the level of a Tortuga LDR or the Poseidon's Voice Lazarus preamp that I currently use. This attenuator is directly connected to the output but the resistors have been very carefully chosen such that the output impedance even at the worst is about 1K-1.5K or thereabouts. Without the attenuator in the circuit, the output impedance is a low 250 ohms across the full bandwidth of 20Hz to 20kHz. A set of tiny toggle switches on the Mute/Phase Selector switch is there to turn it on or off. Remote control is provided by the famous Bent metal unit. A great thanks to Kevin Carter for designing the attenuator and John Chapman for supplying the Bent remote circuitry. Phono stages are very sensitive to noise, so the stock switcher ps for the remote is completely external, with only DC entering the preamp. Best,Anand.
I was fortunate to hear this great amp on Saturday. This is a truly magnificent work of art, inside and out. I couldn't hear much difference tonally or dynamically from my excellent Vista Phono-1 preamp, but Anand's preamp lit up the room and was much more spacious and 3 dimensional than the little opamp wonder. Amazing difference. Feeding AR tube system was magical. Playing Anand's audiophile pressings through all tube system was a great experience. Thanks!!Rich
I agree, the TAPX brought more openness and tonal clarity over the tube preamp. I'm open to trying it, but I worry that it would be too much detail for me. It was a shock to hear that sweetness. When tonal texture gets too strong I can't focus on the music, I guess I'm too sensitive to tone. Maybe I can develop my listening skill and take a little more schnapps in my coffee.
Extreme, like exaggerated?
Anand, nice work! How did the change in caps affect sonics?
After living with the above rendition for 6 months, I decided to replace the Mundorf Silver Gold in Oil parafeed output capacitor and VH Audio Copper/Teflon interstage capacitor with Jupiter Flat Stack and Jupiter Copper respectively. Both were quite livable, with the Jupiter combo being a tad more musical and fleshed out without losing too much detail which the VH Audio/Mundorf SGIO combo excelled at:
