The WD Phonostage is cleared for take off!

[BOONDI]

Originally Posted by Greg.

Yep, but wasn't Thorsten's final take on it almost a complete redesign resembling little of the original?

Agree here Greg...
I followed the treads with intrest and the Phono 3 v3 taken to the max will wipe the floor with a well built ear...

Thorstens approach worked very well but ultimatle involved a transformer LCR aproach and he was customing the LRC upgrade at $1000 just for the LCR filter....

[BOONDI]

Originally Posted by Dave Cawley

At last, I have signed off the WD Phonostage and PSU. They sound good and measure good. In a direct comparison with a fully loaded EAR 834P, both on the bench and in the listening room, the WD washed its face nicely. The EAR is 2.4 times the price, and it is a tad better as you might expect.

I just need to get the parts list to Matthew who can update the PDF and away we go!

Regards

Dave

Hi Dave, is this for a plain Vannilla phonostage?

Or does the Phono 3-VOLUTION v3 with custom caps lead to a MK4?

PHONO 4 V7.0 fully loaded

sounds good....well to the upgrade concious like myself...

[Dave Cawley]

Hi Dave, is this for a plain Vannilla phonostage?

Yes it is.

Dave

[Richard]

Great news Dave and Matthew! I can understand Dave's sound comments for stock units out of the box. I had a brand new Ear 2 years ago and it was very good indeed with Tim's trademark powerful sound. I liked it a lot though some might find it a bit overwhelming.

I found the stock WD3S almost as good but a little anaemic by comparison. Three simple things give control of this though,

the first coupling cap; it is too small in the S and needs to be 0.1uF,

bypass caps on the first stage cathode resistor improve the percieved drive/power bass weight/timing and clarity further up the range, overall huge improvement,

and 5751 can add more tone and depth in place of ECC83. If these are used directly in place of ECC83 they will also be a little brighter if no riaa correction is made so look to adjust C9/10 as my earlier post if you find it too much.

That cap adjustment affects the 75mS corner at 2122Hz also btw and is probably why Guy reports hearing a change of the trimmer by ear. Dave has made a good call on keeping the trimmer (or facility to fit it or leave it out) but I would advocate that if you do not have the gear to adjust it yourself leave it out and use the C9/10 cap values in my earlier post.

[Guy Pettigrew]

A new WD phono amp and power supply?

Very exciting!

Any details yet? Circuit, components etc.

Guy

[Clive]

It's interesting when you look at the 834P circuit and the original Phono 2. Overall topology is similar and the same valves are used, there's even a lack of decoupling of V1 and V2 with both phono stages but for sure there are also differences and the devil is in the detail. Phono 3 fixed the omitted decoupling.

I have not heard a Phono 3 but I have heard a Phono 2 vs the EAR. The Phono 2 wasn't quite stock, it had the coupling caps upgraded, nothing too exotic, maybe not as good as ICW/Soniqs. The EAR had similar mods, plus IIRC and the RIAA mod. I preferred the Phono 2 though it's a while back now and wouldn't want to have to say what the exact differences were. I also preferred the Hagerman Cornet 2 vs the EAR.

It will be interesting to find out more about the latest, Phono 4(?).

[NickG]

Originally Posted by Clive

It's interesting when you look at the 834P circuit and the original Phono 2. Overall topology is similar and the same valves are used, there's even a lack of decoupling of V1 and V2 with both phono stages but for sure there are also differences and the devil is in the detail. Phono 3 fixed the omitted decoupling.

Though it might look similar, there is one huge difference. The WD phono uses passive EQ, the EAR uses the EQ in a feedback lopk.

[Clive]

Originally Posted by NickG

Though it might look similar, there is one huge difference. The WD phono uses passive EQ, the EAR uses the EQ in a feedback lopk.

Agreed and I suspect that big reason could be the cause of my preferring the others.

Edit 1: Oh yes, Nick I should add that Andrew L's take on our 6072A / ECC88 with CCS on both valves (with passive RIAA) also was preferred to the EAR. My version is powered b y a mildly modified WAD PSU2.

Edit 2: I should add as well that the Ray Samuels F-117 NightHawk is currently my fave out over the above phono stages. I don't say this lightly as it's solidstate, which typically is not my preference. So to my mind this is the one for the new WD phonostage to beat.