Assembly complete, a few words of appreciation

[kungfoo]

So, I've built tube amps before, but everything so far has been guitar amps which are far from hifi.  ;D

Over the last few days I assembled the Reduction kit I pre-ordered and received about a week back. Well, what can I say?

WHAT A GREAT LITTLE PREAMP!
The manual is just great and as far as I can tell contains not a single error. With this great manual I guess anyone could build one of those (and maybe should )

I expect that this thing needs some burn-in time but right off the bat, powering it up for the first time, it already sounded better than the pre I was previously using.
I had to go through and spin a few records. Modern vinyl like Muse's 2nd Law sounds awesome but interestingly it seems that older records like Keith Jarret's Belonging gain much more depth.

Here's a few questions I still have:
How long is the expected burn-in time for the caps and tubes to form? Does it have to run and be connected to something? Is there a need for music to be playing or can I just leave it running and go do something else? How many hours will the tubes last?

Cheers from Switzerland

 

[ffivaz]

Cool, someone else from Switzerland

As for me, I had a hiss with the "new" tubes, it disappeared with time (around 20 hours) and with changing one tube. I just listened to music to let them burn in, nothing else. For the caps, I don't really know, I did not hear any difference with time (I have around 200 hours on my Reduction now).

Cheers !

 

[kungfoo]

In case anyone wonders, I'm running with a Ortofon 2m Bronze cartridge on a mmf-5.1 with the old tonearm.

 

[Paul Birkeland]

Ah, this is excellent, one of the new features of the Reduction is the availability of a 240V power transformer.

Burn in is roughly 100-200 hours, with the coupling capacitors benefiting from signal during burn in (but not necessarily the tubes).

We look forward to having some exciting news regarding the Reduction shortly!

-PB

 

[kungfoo]

Can the signal be any source (with low volume) or does it have to be a turntable?

 

[fullheadofnothing]

I think PB was a bit generous about the time it takes to break in the caps. They calm down a fair amount in 20 hours, a bit more at the 50 mark, and I haven't noticed much beyond that.  I burned mine in with radio static in two sessions of about a day each, listening in the middle.  The only reason I even really bothered was because I had a prototype I was supposed to give feedback on in a short time. If this had been a recreational build I would have just listened to it. Life is too short to spend it not listening to music.

 

[Paul Birkeland]

I burned mine in with radio static

Was that radio static on an LP?

 

[Paul Joppa]

... Life is too short to spend it not listening to music.

Words to live by!

 

[earwaxxer]

Cant agree more with the above! Its all good! Its a relationship. Grows better with time....