Natural Sound
Active member
Several years ago I picked up a partially assembled Foreplay III on eBay, dirt cheap. The sale included the Extended Foreplay upgrade kit, un-assembled. My intent was to put together a 6SN7 FPIII pre-amp. The implementation of "hole shrinkers" back in the day would facilitate this socket and wiring modification quite easily. Well, life got busy and and the pre-amp wound up sitting in a box in my closet for at least a decade. Probably a bit longer, I'm not sure. Like I said, life got busy.
This amp was pretty beat up both cosmetically and functionally. Which was part of the reason why I got it so cheap. With a couple of replacement parts from Mouser and a few hours of my now retired time, I'm happy to report that the old girl is singing away beautifully in its stock form. 0D3 regulator and all. The sale came with Russian made Electro Harmonix 12AU7's so I decided to use those in my initial testing. I'm very pleased with the sound so far.
In the mean time I've acquired several 6CG7 pairs over the years. So my journey is taking a bit of a detour. In the next day or so I'll make the necessary filament changes necessary to run the 6CG7's. After some careful listening I'll decide if I want to go further with the 6SN7's.
This amp was pretty beat up both cosmetically and functionally. Which was part of the reason why I got it so cheap. With a couple of replacement parts from Mouser and a few hours of my now retired time, I'm happy to report that the old girl is singing away beautifully in its stock form. 0D3 regulator and all. The sale came with Russian made Electro Harmonix 12AU7's so I decided to use those in my initial testing. I'm very pleased with the sound so far.
In the mean time I've acquired several 6CG7 pairs over the years. So my journey is taking a bit of a detour. In the next day or so I'll make the necessary filament changes necessary to run the 6CG7's. After some careful listening I'll decide if I want to go further with the 6SN7's.
