[christos]

Hi folks,

I am a new member and so far I am pretty excited by what I see in this forum. I am seriously considering building a Clarinet. I know many of you love your Clarinets, and the idea of a virtually infinitely tweekable project is very appealing to me.

However, I have not yet read any direct comparisons of the Clarinet with some of the heavy weights, such as Audio Research, Conrad Johnson, Quicksilver, etc. Given that many of these older preamps can be had for about the same money as a nicely upgraded Clarinet, it would be great to see some direct comparisons.

Please share your experiences!

Current gear so far: Linn Sondek LP12, Linn Ittok LVII, Ortofon X5-MC, Krell KAV 300i (loaner) and Acoustat 2 electrostatics. The latter means that none of the HagTech power amps will work for me, the Acoustats are very power hungry. 

[Bobzilla]

 I too was in this position a short while ago. Please see the following link to my experience.
 Incidentally, I am also using Acoustat 2+2 speakers, and, upon the completion of the line amp, I felt the absolute necessity of modifying the Acoustats! That and the link really makes my feelings clear!

http://www.audiocircle.com/index.php?topic=63343.0

[david62]

I recently built a Clarinet and love it. I am running it into a Mcintosh Mc250 amp driving Cizek model 1 speakers.I have a NAD CD and a Dual turntable.My phono stage is a Mcintosh C-24.The detail,dynamic range,punch and depth of the music are outstanding to my ears.I just put in a set of Amperex tubes which made a nice improvement.I'm interested to read other posts here by those that have compaired a tweeked Clarinet to other preamps.
David

[christos]

Thanks for the link above, it is very helpful in terms of providing ideas on how to tweak the Clarinet and a few comparisons. I must admit that this is very few audio forums where the level of information provided by people is very high.

If you have more comparison experiences please post!

As for the Acouststs, they are amenable to lots of tweaking. Changing the crossover capacitors is a must! I have switched to Blackgates in mine, and there are two pairs of Sonicaps and Mundorf SIOs also waiting to go in (the crossovers have a triple bypass). The 2+2s are great, I wish they would fit my listening room, but the ceiling is too low.

I wonder if Jim Hagerman has any plans for a higher power amp. 8 watts is too low for most speakers other than horns and a few other super-efficient designs. I vote for a 100Wpc design

Great forum guys!

[Bill Epstein]

I ran Acoustat 1+1s for years with a Bedini 25/25. 25 class A watts but more importantly, loads of current! Tube amps are voltage devices; solid state, current. Be careful of over-emphasizing watts in the amp/speaker interface.

I have directly compared my Clarinet with my highly tweaked Audio Research LS-1 as well as my Dual mono all 6SN7 Aikido line stage. The similarities are more striking than the differences.

However, in no particular order, the ARC is the soundstage champ, the Aikido wins for transparency, and the Clarinet has a presentation that remains 'beautiful' even with a highly revealing cartridge and phono stage. Most telling is that the Aikido remains half-rebuilt on the bench, the LS-1 is in its box and my Clarinet is in daily use.

The obvious mod to the Clarinet is replacing the Panasonic volume pot with a top-rated (by me) unit like a PEC, Vintage Audio stepped attenuator, or TKD pot. I intend to do that and have a Vintage Audio unit waiting. Let you know how that works out.

[david62]

Bill,

   What is the advantage of a attenuator?I am using the Panasonic pot now in my Clarinet and it works fine.Desoldering the Panasonic pot and then re-configuring the chassis for a attenuator would have to be worth all of that effort.
Dave

[christos]

RE: attenuator

An attenuator has many advantages over a regular pot. First, the sound quality will theoretically be better if you use high-quality resistors. Second, channel tracking will be more accurate compared to the carbon tracks of a pot. The connection will be better if the attenuator uses high-quality parts such as gold plated connections. Finally, over time the carbon tracks in a pot will inevitably deteriorate, throwing off channel balance, introducing noise, and degrading the connection.

The disadvantage is cost: attenuators run from about $25 to many hundreds of $$.

Switching to an attenuator should not be hard, but since they tend to be big you may have to move your volume control if the attenuator interferes with the PCB. Other than that, you run three wires per channel from the attenuator to the PCB and you are done.

[Bill Epstein]

An attenuator has many advantages over a regular pot. First, the sound quality will theoretically be better if you use high-quality resistors. Second, channel tracking will be more accurate compared to the carbon tracks of a pot. The connection will be better if the attenuator uses high-quality parts such as gold plated connections. Finally, over time the carbon tracks in a pot will inevitably deteriorate, throwing off channel balance, introducing noise, and degrading the connection

What he said!

[david62]

The Clarinet sounds very nice with the stock pot,so I will wait until the pot wears out...If I were starting a new build,I would plan to put a attenuator in.
Dave