Many important things happened in 1977 in the audio world.The least important one was the fact that i was born that year, obviously...
One of the most important though was that E.F Taylor came with a very interesting phono preamp who's beneffits can be scrutinized in this document found here :
https://www.keith-snook.info/wireless-world-magazine/Wireless-World-1977/Distortion%20in%20low-noise%20amplifiers.pdf
I am trully thankful to KCP for pointing me towards this design a few months ago. As i'm lazy i ignored the original schematic and i told myself that maybe nowaday's op-amps can do the job without the frontend transistors, but i wanted to use one of my preffered and easy to use riaa network which leads to some problems as the headroom srinked heavily with available modern op-amps, but i wanted a 10x headphones amplifier next to that phono preamp and that was already built for the max headroom of Bayerdynamic DT880-250 ohms version, so i couldn't get Taylor's phono preamp gain on board too due to my needed overall gain of phono preamp + headphones amp... I built two different versions, one supplied with +-21.5v based on M5220, and one supplied with +-16v based on OPA2228. Some may wanna try different op-amps.
I could tell a lot about all the things i tried with this phono preamp but some may be unimportant so i won't dive too much into it. One of the most limiting factor was that my Technics Class AA based headphones amp is supplied at +-11v and with a gain of 10x the phono preamp headroom is really problematic on dusty records, so i tried some soft clipping methods, but in the end i chose to simply clean the records and let it go...Probably my next approach will be to build a proper compressor.
The only reason why this type of phono preamp never got famous is that you need to rewire the tonearm shielding wire in usual turtables (mine was Dual 701) and attach the preamp right at the end of the tonearm's wires and shield the whole thing which i did.The supply wiring are shielded, including the ground and the shield wire itself...i know...it's crazy, but the final result is fenomenal and if you didn't try that yet it's just about time!
One of the most important though was that E.F Taylor came with a very interesting phono preamp who's beneffits can be scrutinized in this document found here :
https://www.keith-snook.info/wireless-world-magazine/Wireless-World-1977/Distortion%20in%20low-noise%20amplifiers.pdf
I am trully thankful to KCP for pointing me towards this design a few months ago. As i'm lazy i ignored the original schematic and i told myself that maybe nowaday's op-amps can do the job without the frontend transistors, but i wanted to use one of my preffered and easy to use riaa network which leads to some problems as the headroom srinked heavily with available modern op-amps, but i wanted a 10x headphones amplifier next to that phono preamp and that was already built for the max headroom of Bayerdynamic DT880-250 ohms version, so i couldn't get Taylor's phono preamp gain on board too due to my needed overall gain of phono preamp + headphones amp... I built two different versions, one supplied with +-21.5v based on M5220, and one supplied with +-16v based on OPA2228. Some may wanna try different op-amps.
I could tell a lot about all the things i tried with this phono preamp but some may be unimportant so i won't dive too much into it. One of the most limiting factor was that my Technics Class AA based headphones amp is supplied at +-11v and with a gain of 10x the phono preamp headroom is really problematic on dusty records, so i tried some soft clipping methods, but in the end i chose to simply clean the records and let it go...Probably my next approach will be to build a proper compressor.
The only reason why this type of phono preamp never got famous is that you need to rewire the tonearm shielding wire in usual turtables (mine was Dual 701) and attach the preamp right at the end of the tonearm's wires and shield the whole thing which i did.The supply wiring are shielded, including the ground and the shield wire itself...i know...it's crazy, but the final result is fenomenal and if you didn't try that yet it's just about time!
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