Inside the valve preamp

Once more you can see I used the Sprague orange drops. The cct. brds. are snubbed and rubber grommet mounted, including the PS. Pure silver wire is used to connect the signal path to the brds. In my third unit I am also using silver wire and silver solder in a heavy die-cast case. This is the insides of one I built for a friend who commissioned me to make him one after hearing mine which was just bare cct. brds. at that stage. His has two inputs but for some reason I didn't include that in mine.

The black material is speaker box dampening and is made from plastic and rubber with barium in it to make it extra heavy and dead. I put this everywhere I can to get all resonance and vibration out of the cases and brds. The bottom is totally covered in this material. The SM PS is in it's own box and shielded from the preamp brds. The amp is very quiet and I use mine to drive my LM3875 based mono blocks. A great balance of valve warmth and sonics and the clean loud power of the chips. Follow the link for more info:- http://www.diyaudioprojects.com/Tubes/12AX7_Preamp/index.htm