just built the most amazing preamp

[Ianm2]

my basie was wired with a std voltage gain direct coupled into a cathode follower.

It sounded not good, no bass at all, no idea why.

The circuit is the stock basie psu, with the bottlehead foreplay mk 3 circuit.

I took the cathode follower out, which improved things no end, bass, I also removed the led bias, and re-biased it myself, with first an unbypassed resistor, which seemed to lose some of the beautiful top end. this was then bypassed to increase gain and reduce output impedance.

Now, I have changed it again, and its sounding killer, I am running, yes, an ecc83 as a preamp valve, VERY hot, 90 odd percent maximum current, very low anode load. It sounds better than with the ecc82 which in comparison sounds a bit of a mess, very impressive b4 I dropped in the ecc83 though.

no noticable treble loss, apparently, its a pretty bad asymmetrical voltage out, so maybe a redesign necc, but sounds fab

sounds, killer, as Philip would say fokking awesome, really impressed

std gain stage with 200 volts on the b+, 22k anode load, 390 ohm resistor if you want to have a go. ( this may have to change to around 1k)

I couldn't get an rca phonostage circuit going, but I rather like my new preamp, perhaps simple is best after all, and get rid of all these srpp's, cathode followers and all that? It has significanlty bettered the musical fidelity x-pre which uses 2x 6922s with feedback, so that's going to be ebayed soon

I quite like ecc83 run hot, I may try it driving a 300b, totally against the grain, but the sounds the thing