Schematic for Audio Note Preamp KIT (why both expensive and cheap Parts in use) ?

[petertub]

Funny to see someone solder the legs of a ALPS pot made for circuit mount.
I actually made small boards for this : breakout board

 

[jean-paul]

Audio Note... one pays for the name and the reputation. This one seems to be assembled by the typical person that is not precise. Happens too often in this area and it will be quite some work to make it OK.

Is the mains wiring solid wire?

 

[limono]

If it works as intended why touch it ? I don't see any cheap electrolytic caps there. Good industrial standard and what you see in all four- five figure factory equipment . I had similar factory built M1 preamp and it sounded great. M2 clone containing M3 phono stage which I built for a friend was easily better than his prized Audio Research SP16 preamp .
You do pay up to neck for AN gear but that equipment usually do perform on elevated level and it is meant to be used in all AN system.

 

[limono]

I hope this preamp was not made by you...

Actually I see little which is questionable there. To assemble a preamp like this is a whole lot more work than in typical "neat" DIY crap tossed into drawer after a month of playing. Silver Audio Note $$$ wire , Jensen copper Pio caps (the old ones tend to leak after 10 years so it's worth checking for leakage especially RIAA caps ) Black gate caps , Beyschlag 0.5W resistor , Kondo based phono and line amp . I bet the stock kit came with standard capacitors , ERO MKT Green mylar caps (quite wonderful cheap capacitors ) , and open frame Alps Radio Schack potentiometers. All the upscale $$$ parts were an upgrade by the owners of the unit. If that thing is up the snuff it will easily rival $5k preamps from the usual suspects

 

[limono]

Let's be real here. Without lifting the lid could you tell if the signal passed through a 10 cent capacitor or a $100 capacitor?

I own Nagra PLP $11k preamp . ALL the capacitors are 10 cents industrial standard units and all the passive parts (except the transformers ) are worth maybe $25 . Now , check $11K Audio Note preamp and what's inside.
Everybody knows that the most pleasing sound machine is a vintage receiver connected to a run of the mill speakers....

 

[jean-paul]

You do pay up to neck for AN gear but that equipment usually do perform on elevated level and it is meant to be used in all AN system.

Add the upgrade levels and upgrade parts that one is supposed to buy to that. Maybe it is one of the few commercial systems in audio that do make a lot of money. It also leads to Apple like customers that are very sensitive to criticism and that are overly brand aware regarding parts (also sold by AN) and desire upgrades from day 1 they own the gear. A successful strategy.

This particular one is built sloppy. That it works does not make a difference, that is a minimum feature and a must. If one only looks at minimal possible functioning then why buy AN? Limono, your remark on assembling "neat" DIY crap is strange. There are several devices at diyaudio.com that perform flawless, are well organized in terms of layout etc. and are sold in large numbers to many satisfied builders. With a BOM consisting of quality industrial parts, good quality potentiometers and switches and also performing way above the average. Seeing that standard and then this device is probably causing the remarks 🙂 Another area and probably not a one where people buy a 11k preamp with 25$ worth of parts, it is likely exactly the opposite.

 

[limono]

All good points. I don't own anything Apple and neither I own any AN factory built gear because I also think their prices are pretty much outrageous. I do own some parts and partial " sloppy" kits admittedly.
This is a kit from the last century.
Recent kits from ANK and a factory AN products have mostly impeccable built quality .Point to point wiring tend to be rather messy affair and the way AN is doing it is actually pretty neat.
No matter what one think of Audio Note sound ( personally I rather like it ) they built their reputation on that sound and are entitled to charge what market will bear and get rich doing it. Basic premise of capitalism and Asians are partially to blame .
AN have their voicing formula most DIY stuff lacks and constant upgrade is a DIY mentality as well so no reason to blame AN UK for tapping into Western consumerism and ever-present classification of everything with their system levels which I also find to be a rat trap.

 

[tansand]

As a luxry item, seems like esthetic choices. Visual, sonic, intellectual, whatever.

 

[kodabmx]

Funny to see someone solder the legs of a ALPS pot made for circuit mount.
I actually made small boards for this : breakout board

I get:

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You don't have permission to access /tubedoc/RH2701.jpg on this server because you are currently blacklisted by a DNSBL server at: webaccess.manet.nu

 

[euro21]

I get:

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You don't have permission to access /tubedoc/RH2701.jpg on this server because you are currently blacklisted by a DNSBL server at: webaccess.manet.nu

 

[Veeren]

View attachment 1038259

Hello all, thank you for the schematic! I lost mine and I have this kit
I find it hard to improve on it and only had to change the leaking AN pio`s and the BG in the line stage.
It uses stranded hook-up wire.
The most important thing I did was to move the choke and put a shielding can on it for without it there is a serious hum and noise breakthrue on the phono and line stage. A design oversight.
Caps used were Audyn true copper foils, very happy with the result.
The reason ptp wiring might sound better could be related to the type of lacker used on printed cirquit boards , check out Abbas Audio he wrote about it.

 

[stiles]

ChrisP got it right. Little green film caps for the coupling caps, Panasonic electrolytic caps, hot garbage volume and ballance pots that mounted on a pcb with a smaller ribbon cable. Only thing I did to mine was got audio note pots and bent the legs to fit the pcb and reamed the case to make them fit. I replaced the rectifier with a nos one. I was going to replace the phono tubes with nos 6072's but the sticker shock did that idea in.

 

[ChrisP]

I did put 6072a's in the phonostage, mostly because that's what the original m7 circuit was designed for. I also put some CV4003's in the linestage replacing the cheap looking ecc82's which were rather microphonic. To be fair I was using this with a World Audio Design K5881 power amp that was far too sensitive. With the original ecc82's you could hear your footsteps through the speakers as you walked accross the room.

 

[ChrisP]

In the end I built a Morgan Jones EC8010 RIAA and 6S45P cable driver in the chassis, with an external PSU. I shall probably put this in another chassis and rebuild the AN Pre and sell it on ebay at some point.

 

[Veeren]

ChrisP got it right. Little green film caps for the coupling caps, Panasonic electrolytic caps, hot garbage volume and ballance pots that mounted on a pcb with a smaller ribbon cable. Only thing I did to mine was got audio note pots and bent the legs to fit the pcb and reamed the case to make them fit. I replaced the rectifier with a nos one. I was going to replace the phono tubes with nos 6072's but the sticker shock did that idea in.

Hi Styles, what tubes do you use in the phono stage? Apparently there is a sub for the 6072A but it cost something like 50 euro each autch!

 

[stiles]

Hi Styles, what tubes do you use in the phono stage? Apparently there is a sub for the 6072A but it cost something like 50 euro each autch!

I'm still using the OG Sovtek 12ax7xt. I've left this pre amp on for over 7 years at a time and they still work. I was just too lazy to reach behind and turn it off. I think that's what my kit shipped with, after all I purchased it in 1997 from Angela Instruments so I may be wrong. I did replace the 12AU7, with some NOS tubes and I don't remember the actual manufacture but they are branded with a M with a V on top of the M and inside a circle, some sort of rebrand, marked U.S.A.... 12AU7A... MADE IN USA ... 60-46.... 274. When I bought them I knew the manufacture but I have no clue now. (the ... is just line breaks). If someone knows this tube origin I'd love to hear it.

And ChrisP is right about the original 12AU7's, they were microphonic but I had the pre in a room that was carpeted on a cement foundation in a cabinet that is as heavy as a main battle tank. so I didn't have much issues with them. I believe they were a Yugoslavian made tube and they had a reputation of being good when they worked but had issues of premature failure and didn't last very very long. I guess cheap thrills with microphonics, gotta love the 90's! I think they were manufactured by EI, but that's just from memory. I have always used the tube shields with all the tubes so there was some mechanical dampening.

Oh the original rectifier was some cheep Chinese tube supposed equivalent and it arced on power on so I replaced it with a GE 6X5GT, I got 2 from an ebay seller and one is branded FORD. That is so funny.

I still use it as a dedicated moving magnet phono preamp. I guess I'm a 1.0 type of a guy.

I did pull it out of it's home, I need to clean it up and inspect the caps. I may take some pics of my first DIY audio and electronic build. It will be fun to be scrutinized on my first build 😀

BTW I was wrong, there are no Panasonic caps, they are CapXon and Rubycon. The coupling caps are green prismatic ERO mtk. I was also wrong about the volume and balance board, there is no second ribbon cable, the PCB is jumpered to the switch PCB and 1 ribbon cable takes everything to the back.

 

[Demonkleaner]

I'm still using the OG Sovtek 12ax7xt. I've left this pre amp on for over 7 years at a time and they still work. I was just too lazy to reach behind and turn it off. I think that's what my kit shipped with, after all I purchased it in 1997 from Angela Instruments so I may be wrong. I did replace the 12AU7, with some NOS tubes and I don't remember the actual manufacture but they are branded with a M with a V on top of the M and inside a circle, some sort of rebrand, marked U.S.A.... 12AU7A... MADE IN USA ... 60-46.... 274. When I bought them I knew the manufacture but I have no clue now. (the ... is just line breaks). If someone knows this tube origin I'd love to hear it.

And ChrisP is right about the original 12AU7's, they were microphonic but I had the pre in a room that was carpeted on a cement foundation in a cabinet that is as heavy as a main battle tank. so I didn't have much issues with them. I believe they were a Yugoslavian made tube and they had a reputation of being good when they worked but had issues of premature failure and didn't last very very long. I guess cheap thrills with microphonics, gotta love the 90's! I think they were manufactured by EI, but that's just from memory. I have always used the tube shields with all the tubes so there was some mechanical dampening.

Oh the original rectifier was some cheep Chinese tube supposed equivalent and it arced on power on so I replaced it with a GE 6X5GT, I got 2 from an ebay seller and one is branded FORD. That is so funny.

I still use it as a dedicated moving magnet phono preamp. I guess I'm a 1.0 type of a guy.

I did pull it out of it's home, I need to clean it up and inspect the caps. I may take some pics of my first DIY audio and electronic build. It will be fun to be scrutinized on my first build 😀

BTW I was wrong, there are no Panasonic caps, they are CapXon and Rubycon. The coupling caps are green prismatic ERO mtk. I was also wrong about the volume and balance board, there is no second ribbon cable, the PCB is jumpered to the switch PCB and 1 ribbon cable takes everything to the back.

Your mystery tubes (12AU7) are Voice of Music rebrands. I have one or two of them think. I recently used the iron from a VoM tape recorder
to build a guitar amp. I believe they used different tube vendors to rebrand. They appear to be RCA to me but I'm not sure. Tube is a bit crusty.

 

[stiles]

That is it, thank ya for the info sir. I tended to think they were RCA but I didn't remember.

 

[Veeren]

Thanks everyone for your replies, I changed the 12au7a to GE 6189 as I found the Mullards too warm and fuzzy in this pre and in my system.
The GE 6072wa are still in the phono section doing well.
It is nice to learn about other peoples experience with this preamp.

 

[stiles]

I'm going to try posting some pics, some are so funny, I'm not sure if I could comment or just let people figure it out.