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
