Scotty’s BB3 build

Chinese amps don't have Radford transformers though. Arthur Radford was arguably the best designer of transformers.

I doubt the Chinese have even come close with their 'copy and paste' techniques.
Just saying that the performance depends on everything working together, as you have intimated.

Hmmm

The type of capacitor used and it's rating are what's important in most amps, not whether it's an uber-expensive one.  It's such a shame that so many companies have jumped on the bandwagons of promoting such things has swayed opinion and I do feel this is one of the industry's most culpable failings in recent years as it is plain dishonesty further backed by subjective journalism, with little to nothing in basis of fact.  Yes, there are one or two types, that used specifically in certain parts of a circuit will do the job slightly better by both design and by manufacturing accuracy and quality.  But to make blanket claims that dusting any valve amp with a plethora of boutique parts when it's circuit is mostly what dictates sound quality I am afraid is not an accurate generalisation.

Just for reference, Radfords use 26dB of global negative feedback to achieve an output impedance of just 0.18 Ohms at 1KHz at full power.  No Chinese made amp comes remotely close.  In fact no valve amplifier using transformers comes remotely close!  (to be fair, there are one or two but they are at telephone book price tags).  They use what they need to use to achieve excellence, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with a single capacitor used in their circuits.  I know that this is something that they shake their heads at when read on forums (ie "they don't use fancy capacitors?!").  They know more than most of us put together about what makes an amp tick and it would be a brave person that chooses to take them on in a head to head technical argument about this.  They also, for the record, have a pair of ears each and know how to use them LoL! 


Because they use this much feedback you could stick a capacitor made of unicorn horn and fairy dust in the circuit and it would make no difference.  It is one of the most stable PP valve amps, and one of the most accurate, ever designed or made.  The fact that frequency response cannot be skewed by reactive components which may do something other than intended at the specific value, is rather a good thing from a design perspective and is backed up by listening too.

Decided to redo the umbilical cable and make my own up as, with hindsight, the first one at 2.5mm was too big for the buckets on the connector. Took the opportunity to sort my loading plugs too.....

These have resistors for my SPU as it happens. Yet to do the ones with caps in....

Nice, mine is a Classic GM E which I love too. To be honest I don't have much experience of many other cartridges, same with kit in general really, but I love listening to music so it must be ok....

Agreed but being sort of pedantic it's resistance I need with the moving coils. At the moment I have put 47R in there that with the default 1K gives me around 45R. My understanding is these SPUs like to see around 50R so I'm in the ballpark but will have a play as needed.

Oh, test valve in to get the right height of stand off....

So what's happening here then??

Ah! i see.

I love the grain on that wood....stunning

Excellent execution.

Cheers all, going to do a bit more today. All being well all that will be left is fitting the last few components and soldering the leads to the board. Components are due here Tuesday so having a first fire up will have to wait, hope it works lol.....

No problem either way as long as you keep the wiring as short as possible.

Thanks both.

Lol...we've all been there.

Very tidy work