[amandarae]

Hello,

Like many who owns the Cornet 2, I prefer the Cornet 2 when using an SUT instead of the Piccolo.   Now, I am using full blown SET base systems with 100dB speakers and I found a very nice use for my Piccolo.



With my Octal base phono preamp (6SL7 using battery bias on the cathode), the Piccolo is nothing short of a revelation!  The noise floor, which is a very delicate issue with SET, is much lower than using the SUT with this phono, or the Cornet 2.

With a Denon 103 on either my Garrard or Thorens, using 26dB of gain at 100 ohms, to my ears and my friends who checked out my system, the 6SL7/Piccolo combo can easily beat my Cornet 2/ Cinemag combo.  Of course, with it, the phono section is Humprey! 


All in all, I am just reporting my experience and may or may not reflect your own.   All I can say is when you think you have your system dialed in already, one of this days, give the Piccolo another chance.


System pic





regards,

Abe

[PatOMalley]

I will never never ever and have no real hope of catching up. But I won't give up yet.
I have been reading a little bit about single drivers, how to build into an enclosure vs open baffle, etc. What drivers are those?

Single drivers, being that you don't need a crossover, have got to be easy to construct as it looks in your photo. Cut a hole in a plank, insert driver, secure, solder red to red, etc. More news on the speakers, por favor.

[analog97]

Abe,

I think you need another turntable.  Only four?      Seriously, though I am very interested to hear those single-driver speakers.  It's hard to imagine they can do it all.   Beautiful pictures!!

[amandarae]

Hello Pat, analog97,

I will PM you regarding your inquiries later as I am in the middle of something.  I do not want to get OT here since my intention is to highlight the Piccolo.  I posted the system pic just to support my post.  I have utmost respect for Jim and that extends to his forum as well.

later, I promise...


regards,

Abe

[tubesforever]

I need to find some affordable Tannoy 15 inch Reds.... 

I need to ask you a couple of questions Abe. 

First you mentioned the Piccolo is quieter than the Cinemag.  I hear exactly no noise from my Cinemag.  In fact it is sonically transparent and adds or detracts nothing from the signal.  I can run my .8 VDH straight into my C2 loaded at approximately 250-600 ohm load and I just have to crank up the volume on my Clarinet  With the Cinemag on its 600 ohm tap, the sound is exactly the same.  So how and what kind of noise can you describe from your Cinemags?

Second, your Piccolo seems to be in steel case work.  Was the Cinemag also in a steel case?  My Cinemags have to be a considerable distance away from the transformers to be silent.  Mine are inside an aluminum case.  I was thinking about trying a mu metal case to see if I could get it to work closer to my other electronics.   If the casework is steel it might be doing a better job handling stray fields.  Are you using Steel?  and why final gain setting are you using on the Piccolo.  I found the second from the highest to sound great overall. 

I plan to get my Piccolo up and running again this Winter.  Right now I have plinths to build before the weather turns sour on me.

Your system is gorgeous!  Kudos for all the hard work.  I know it was well worth every minute, dime, and sore joints.  Cheers!

[PatOMalley]

I added 10 ohm Allen Bradly caps from negative to ground at input. I saw this on a Wright SUT. The word is that it moves the ground/noise to another plane.



Now, the only reason I did not go for the Piccolo is that I fell hard for the 103. Otherwise the versatility that the Piccolo has would have sealed it.

[amandarae]

I need to find some affordable Tannoy 15 inch Reds.... 

I need to ask you a couple of questions Abe. 

First you mentioned the Piccolo is quieter than the Cinemag.  I hear exactly no noise from my Cinemag.  In fact it is sonically transparent and adds or detracts nothing from the signal.  I can run my .8 VDH straight into my C2 loaded at approximately 250-600 ohm load and I just have to crank up the volume on my Clarinet  With the Cinemag on its 600 ohm tap, the sound is exactly the same.  So how and what kind of noise can you describe from your Cinemags?

Second, your Piccolo seems to be in steel case work.  Was the Cinemag also in a steel case?  My Cinemags have to be a considerable distance away from the transformers to be silent.  Mine are inside an aluminum case.  I was thinking about trying a mu metal case to see if I could get it to work closer to my other electronics.   If the casework is steel it might be doing a better job handling stray fields.  Are you using Steel?  and why final gain setting are you using on the Piccolo.  I found the second from the highest to sound great overall. 

I plan to get my Piccolo up and running again this Winter.  Right now I have plinths to build before the weather turns sour on me.

Your system is gorgeous!  Kudos for all the hard work.  I know it was well worth every minute, dime, and sore joints.  Cheers!

Hey tubes,

Let's talk very specific here.  My  observation is within my current system's context only.   Before, with my Orions, Magnepans, etc speakers (the Orions about 92 dB I think), the Cornet 2 and the two pairs of Cinemags are dead quiet.  Even using a DL304 at 0.25 mV, therefore needing a lot of gain, say, 1:36,  there were no issues.

But the land of SET/High Sensitivity is a different animal all together.   You know that and I do not have to explain it to you for sure.  Just for kicks, get a voltmeter and set it to mVAC, now with no source playing but phono, linestage, amp are on, measure the output coming out of your amp when you are in phono with the volume pot on the amp, if equipped, open all the way, what figures do you measure?  In my system, if this figure is over 3.5 mV, you will hear it during quiet passages and in between tracks on normal listening levels at 10 feet away from the speakers.  That is how sensitive my current set up is nowadays.  So my amps need to have a hum figure at least lower than 3 mV or else I have to figure out how to make them quieter.  But, and I kid you not, nothing compares to a high sensitivity system in terms of dynamics, and I believe nothing!  You will hear everything that is recorded!  Maybe I am wrong with that, but this figure is important in my current set up.

So, when I say the Piccolo/ 6SL7 preamp or Piccolo Cornet 2 preamp combo is quieter than my Cornet 2/Cinemag SUT, I am referring to the hum figures that the combo generates when powered and hooked up together as measured coming out of the amps output.  You can increase the volume pot on the main preamp until ou hit the region where you can hear tube rush/inherent hum or whatever and see the figures at the amp output jumps up.  With the Cinemag, starting from 6 O'clock as zero CW or all the way attenuated, I approached 1 O'clock and I hear something already.  With the Piccolo, I can reached 2 to3 O'clock (5 O'clock as fully open) before I hear the noise.  


Yes, both my Cinemag are in steel cases.  One pair inside using a Farady cage , one pair outside as you might recognize in the system pic (below the Thorens TD124 MKKII, far right).


As for the gain settings I use for the Piccolo, in my applications, 26 dB with 100 ohms seems the best as compared to the 20 dB you prefer at 600 ohms.

Lastly, thanks for the kind words tubes (Jim!), I really appreciate it!  

regards,

Abe

[amandarae]

I added 10 ohm Allen Bradly caps from negative to ground at input. I saw this on a Wright SUT. The word is that it moves the ground/noise to another plane.



Now, the only reason I did not go for the Piccolo is that I fell hard for the 103. Otherwise the versatility that the Piccolo has would have sealed it.

Hello Pat,

I see.  It looks like the purpose of the 10 ohm resistor is to "lift" the ground plane with reference to ground by the amount of voltage formed by the SUT's DCR and the 10 ohm resistor acting as voltage dividers.

I do not know a lot but I think  it is the same application I use when I built my preamps wherein you lift the heaters to a voltage reference from the main ground of the PSU so that hum is greatly minimize.  Nothing wrong with that.

regards,

Abe

[ecir38]

Nice rightup Abe, I do the same thing when swapping components to see if they induce or reduce noise.

BR

[amandarae]

Nice rightup Abe, I do the same thing when swapping components to see if they induce or reduce noise.

BR

Thanks!  How's does the Cornet 2 compares to your JEL phono section?

regards,

Abe

[Bill Epstein]

Hmmm (not hummmmm), my 97 dB speakers are dead quiet, right up close, with my Cinemag feeding the Nova Phenomena set to 50k and 60 dB of gain. The PEC volume pot is routinely at 2 to 3 o'clock with my 1.8 watt amp.

I'll have to wait until the Cornet is running to really know how quiet the SUT is, I suppose. I only hooked it up to the Nova to know if the build was good. Funny thing about the Nova, even with my latest Pi speakers, which are more revealing than any before, I can't hear any difference between running it with AC or the battery supply. Perhaps Progress Energy is doing something right. 

For those of you scoring at home, the Cinemags are in the extruded Hammond aluminum case; the PEC is in the plain jane one.

[ecir38]

Thanks!  How's does the Cornet 2 compares to your JEL phono section?

regards,

Abe

Haven't built the JEL pre yet but have about half of the parts for it so far. Your write up here is encouraging. Gustav and Ike threw a wrench in some of my projects right now. Don't want to get off topic but I will have these built hopefully by next weekend with the FE207E.
http://www.frugal-horn.com/metronome.html
Then probably try these out after the JELpre next year.
http://www.quarter-wave.com/OBs/OB_Design.pdf
I have this FR thing going on right now too.

Getting ready to walk out the door for RMAF sorry for going OT a little. Hope to be able to give feedback on your question in the near future since I have the piccolo and the cinemag is on the list too. 

BTW very nice Bill!

BR

[amandarae]

Hmmm (not hummmmm), my 97 dB speakers are dead quiet, right up close, with my Cinemag feeding the Nova Phenomena set to 50k and 60 dB of gain. The PEC volume pot is routinely at 2 to 3 o'clock with my 1.8 watt amp.

I'll have to wait until the Cornet is running to really know how quiet the SUT is, I suppose. I only hooked it up to the Nova to know if the build was good. Funny thing about the Nova, even with my latest Pi speakers, which are more revealing than any before, I can't hear any difference between running it with AC or the battery supply. Perhaps Progress Energy is doing something right. 

For those of you scoring at home, the Cinemags are in the extruded Hammond aluminum case; the PEC is in the plain jane one.

Hello Bill,

First off, awesome system!  It's very "soft" on the eyes and I bet sounds great too!

Let's see.... at 97 dB speakers sensitivity, my speakers is 3 dB more.  That is twice the power  and 1/2 voltage higher in sensitivity.  In this scenario, I believe the amp sensitivity will take into effect when we talk about hum.  My JEL 2A3 DX SE needs 0.3 Vrms to get full power (4.5 watts at 17-18 Power dissipation).  So, compared to an amp that has say 1 Vrms rating, any hum present at the input will be multiplied at least 3.33 times. 

I am using PEC 100k pot (250k on the preamp linestage) at the amp input as well.  With my current settings, I can get 2.8 mV hum at the amp output when the PEC vol pot on the amp is fully open and so far, I do not hear hum.  These are my baseline and from here, I can determine if a tube that I will use as a replacement in the preamp or amp is noisy or not.

regards,

Abe

[andrew]

I haven't heard Jim's Piccolo, though I would love to, I recall the thread where it sort of all started, we were discussing Marshall Leach's circuits for I to V conversion. I had built one and Jim provided some very useful insights into its operation. Anyway, about the same time we discussed loading the primary of the step ups rather than the secondary.

I would recommend this as a worthwhile experiment, especially if any of you use any of the 103 family. Please try 100R across the primary for a 103R, perhaps a bit more for a stock 103 and if you can remove the 47k on the phono replace it with 1Meg if you can't do this don't panic too much, see if you like the sound first. Adjust the 100R up or down to suit tastes, of course. Be interested in your thoughts and if you like this.

  all the best,

-- Andrew