Nearby: Zen Amp | Mystery cables | the Zen Friend
With the recent (albiet unfortuante) acquisition of my wife's grandparents LP record collection, I've been (re)exploring the world of vinal. In short, I absolutely love it. Further, my wife loves it (as she puts it, "it seem to have more... 'texture!'") Her interest in this helps in the support of my somewhat skewed audio habits :)
Puting in place the neccesary gear to ensure enjoyable listening of this vinal, however, turns out to be a more challenging task than I anticipated. In an ideal world, I'd be the happy owner of a Bix turntable, and Decware Phono Stage. Unfortunatly, I'm not quite there yet... The following is a scratch-pad designed to collect various notes regarding steps I'm taking to get back into vinal.
20040617: My friend has a Technics SL-D2 with Grado GR3 cartridge that he's graciously donated to the cause to help figure out if this vinyl thing was going to work for me. It didn't take long for me to figure this one out and start to hunt for an upgrade at a good price. After various reviews (and a bit of luck) I ended up with the Music Hall MMF-5 with a Sumiko Blue Point Special Cartridge. (note: The following picture is example of the turntable, but not the actual one.)
I expect to take position of this within the next week. As such, I'm refocusing attention on a pre-amp that will be a good complement
Various lines of research (AudioXPress review on Budget Phono Preamps, Decware and aa threads), along with a couple of knee-jerk reactions led me to purchace Hagerman's Bugle Phono preamp kit and power supply in an attempt to satisfy my phono needs at this time.
These 'kits' are in essence circuit boards and a parts list which you order from digikey.
One of the reasons I went with the bugle (in addition to price) was the ability to alter the gain on this preamp to best match my Zen amp (thanks Eli for the suggestions). In order to do this I've had to order the correct parts. Quick email from Jim Hagerman informed me to change the the 1.30k resistors to 680 (digikey part number 681XBK-ND) for the 50db version to best match my high output Moving Coil cartridge.
Lessons Learned so far:
Ok... on to the specifics
While I really like the idea of a DC battery driven phono preamp, I don't want to constantly be replacing batteries. As such I bought the Hagerman power supply in addition to the Pre-amp. Additionally, I read somewhere the powersupply provides a bit more head-room and dynamics (not sure where however... arggg).
20040810: I finally integrated the Bugle, coupled with a switch-box into what I call my Zen friend.
20040610: I finally got a few hours to put together the power supply. This took me much longer than I expected in part because I've been on the road so much and in part because I unfortunatly didn't order all of the parts from digikey the first time. Lesson.. check the invoice and remeber to hit the 'submit' key! In the end I just hope this kit sounds half as enjoyable as it was to build :)
20040617: Just finished the preamp.
20040622: It's alive!
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I've decided to integrate the phono preamp into an input selector box for my Amp - codename the Zen Friend. The following are various ready reference pointers which have been helpful in getting the parts I need for this project.
Switches
Case
Knobs
Miscellaneous Parts