[colhogan]

Mr Tanner:
I had a question regarding older Bryston pre-amplifiers:

Other than the additional operational facilities that an 11B allows for,is it any different from a .4B internally.?
For example,Better parts, Different layout,etc?
I asked because I own both units,and as crazy as this may sound, I think they sound somewhat different.
Is that just in my head?
For what it's worth, I'm using a Bryston 2B LP amplifier,via RCA connections
Regards,
Patrick

[Jozsef]

While we wait for technical information about the respective topologies, which quite honestly I've forgotten, I can assure you that in the nearly 40 years I've known them, Bryston  has never put anything but the best parts available into any unit. Price differences have always been directly related to production cost so more complex devices had to sell for more. With a 20 year warranty, the logic is obvious but even before that was made official, they always repaired units at no charge. As the years went by, it made sense to have an official very long warranty with only a modest charge to fix really old products from the 70s and 80s.

I would have both of those serviced since electrolytic caps don't age well for the purposes of audio reproduction after a couple of decades even when using the best ones.

[James Tanner]

Hi colhogan

Assuming all is working correctly in both of the older preamps the .4B was a scaled down version of the 11B.  So the parts used where identical in the circuit path - no better/best in other words just feature set.  That being said the .4B had shorter signal paths due to the size of the unit so there could be some small sonic differences there.

Given the age of both units though I would say the differences can probably be attributed to different aging factors possibly.

james