All about electronic valves and hi-fi
Here’s an excellent build of the 01a Preamp with the gyrator PCBs and the Source Follower PCBs by Paul. I will leave to him to write down his impressions of this preamp and the build experience.
After doing all the soldering part (which I enjoy much), the preamp is now finished. It sounds as good as the original breadboard:
For the curious ones, here you have a picture of the inside:
The teflon sockets are bolted straight into the 4mm top aluminium plate. No microphonic noise this way. Rod Coleman V7 regulators set to 200mA. A pair of Russian Military NOS wire-wound resistors in parallel provides the filament bias. The gyrator PCB is set as per original circuit and each valve at 3mA. These are DC coupled to the MOSFET follower PCB set at 10mA each. The output is then taken out from a pair of FT-3 teflon caps.
Now to enjoy this beauty!
I previously implemented a preamp with the UV-201a. These are very old globe valves, somehow fragile and hard to get in good shape. Despite all this, it’s a superb valve. I have managed to acquire a decent set of them to pair the best valves to use in my preamp.
Recently I developed a prototype PCB for the source follower circuit. The source follower is ideal to place at the output of this preamp due to its low driving current. My 4P1L PSE amplifier will be pleased with more current to pump the Miller capacitance effectively.
The VT-25 DHT Preamp is now part of my system as I do like it a lot. Therefore the Mule was vacant for a new experiment. It was the time for the 3B7 valve. This was introduced to me by my friend Paul, who has implemented it using the gyrator and is very happy with it. The 3B7 has a pair of triodes in the same bottle. I wired them in parallel as well as the filaments, which have same current specifications as the 01a.
Most of the mid-mu DHTs tend to be microphonic. This one is an exception, although some singing comes out of them, its very minor and not impacting the stage.
This was one of my first DHT preamps. I found a quartet of NOS CX-112a Cunningham (globe) back in Buenos Aires many years ago and built one of my first DHT preamps. I loved it. I played with it before I moved into the 26 and then started the long exploratory journey with DHTs.
The CX-112a can be easily fit in an existing 01a preamp. Take a look at what Thomas Mayer recently blogged about this valve, worth reading it.
Well, you can get more current drive than 01a (nearly double) but no thoriated tungsten filaments. Anyhow, the gain is slightly higher but is very easy to adapt to my gyrator-based circuit, that I couldn’t resist to take the quartet out of my valve stash and make them sing again after so many years.
Yesterday I started with the build of a new 01a preamp Gen2. I made some component changes during the build process thanks to Andy Evans who reminded me of the Russian FT-2 teflon capacitors. I had a pair left of 220nF FT-3 caps in stock!
The circuit is the same as the original preamp but with some component changes:
The bias point is changed slightly up to 5V so the anode voltage is increased to 115V to get the 3mA of anode current. This time I’m using the BF862 which can be soldered in the gyrator PCB instead of the 2SK170. I preferred the sound and higher bandwidth as well as lower output impedance. The BF862 is a real winner as lower FET.
Here is a view of the preamp inside:
The heavy FT-3 caps are mounted on top of the gyrator PCB boards. The top anodised plate is 4mm thick and anodised. The teflon UX-4 sockets from Luciano Bandozzi (Jakeband) are mounted with silent blocks and Rod’s regulators are bolted to the top plate. you don’t have to as they dissipate very little power in this case.
How does it sound? Well, just played it for a couple of hours and I’m amazed with the subtle differences that the Russian wirewound resistors and output cap + BF862 can bring to this preamp. We did some listening tests recently with Andy Evans comparing filament resistors and these ones were real winners for both of us.
I hope it improves with time after breaks in a bit more.
Yet, another 01a preamp. This time with a beautiful machined top plate and wooden frame:
Will try the Russian filament resistor which we tested at Andy Evans’ and sounded amazing. Just need to build a new pair of Rod Coleman Boards and do the wiring:
The name I guess says it all. This is yet another DHT preamp with the gyrator PCB. So what’s different? Simply, a breadboard DHT preamp module ready to be abused. I’m planning to mod this to death and try a long list of other DHTs with the gyrator load.
I will only need to change the valve sockets (or build an adaptor) as well as the filament resistors and Rod Coleman filament regulators. Simple changes which can be done fast, will open the door to quick tests on my system.
In order to make this simple and a rapid build, I opted to use an IKEA chopping board. These are made of a laminated hardwood and are dirt cheap. A couple of hours are required to drill all the board like this:
Job done. You only need to do this once. Here is another look at the half-build Mule:
The initial sockets are NOS short pin UX-4/UV-4. I will play around with the 01a before I move to other DHTs. I still need to add the tag strips for filament resistors, output capacitors and the filament regulators.
Wiring will take a couple of hours and we should have another DHT amp to play with 🙂
An enthusiast blog reader (Paul Prinz) implemented a nice version of the DHT preamplifier using the gyrator PCB but for the 3B7 triode. The 3B7 triode has a pair of DHT triodes on the same bottle. It has a high mu for a DHT (about 20) but with that it comes the higher anode resistance. This was a drawback when implementing a choke or transformer loaded stage due to the high anode resistance (there is no free lunch am afraid). However, with the mu-stage, this doesn’t become an issue and we can get the most out of this valve using the gyrator load.
Although I tried the 3B7 in the past, I proceeded to get it out from my valve stash and trace it again. Here is a nice set of a Sylvania military NOS one:
