The road to nirvana |
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My journey into Photography, Horology, and Audiophilia |
Bottlehead's Foreplay
At some point in time I wanted to try a pre amplifier project, and I think one could not go wrong with Bottlehead's Foreplay.
I wanted it done as cheaply as possible, and in the end, I spent no more than PhP2,500 for this project. No exotic parts, just those that can be bought from a local electronics store. Oh, I lied, I used ALPS blue for the potentiometer if you consider it exotic. It looked like this-
Whatever it looks like, it sounds like a Foreplay!
It sounds so good, that I was asked by a friend to make one for him, but uses more upscale parts such as Auricaps for the coupling capacitor, Cardas RCA jacks, FR107 diodes and ALPS volume control. This time I followed the layout as suggested in the Foreplay manual. Here is the completed unit-
And in testing-
Both are dead silent even at full volume (no signal) driving my Anthem Amp 1 power amplifier.
I have used this pre amp for the longest time, until found a tube vendor who has lots Western Electric 407A tubes and sells them cheap. This discovery led to my Western Electric 407A pre amp project.