Foreplay III is finished and sounds incredible

[debk]

I just finished my Foreplay III.  OMG, does this sound great, I am in sonic heaven.  Very rich, warm, powerful sound.  The first thing I played was Super Tramp Crime of the Century LP, same as when I first listened to my Seduction.  My system has never sounded so good!  Thanks Bottlehead

Seduction and Foreplay together

Next is the extended Foreplay upgrade


Debra

 

[Doc B]

Thanks Deb! Those purple bases and the hammertone end bell on the power trans rock!

 

[Grainger49]

The copper is a very good contrast to the coloring on the base.  And you got a good textured finish.

I tried hammertone on my Seduction, my first Bottlehead kit.  I did an awful job.  The color didn't really complement the wood and now it is posted as Bud-tugly Seduction in the Gallery.

I should have chosen a greater contrasting color.  I should have sprayed in a cleaner area, dust got into the paint.  

Deb, nice work.  I'm getting used to the purple, it really grows on you.  Now it wold look wrong it you did another color.

 

[debk]

Thanks.  The hammertone turned out better on the Foreplay than it did on the Seduction.  I figured out that less is more.  I did one to many coats on the Seduction and it lost some of the hammered effect.

I am going to try my hand at building some speakers next.  I think I will use purpleheart wood veneer on them instead of the purple dye.  With them being in my theater I think the the more intense purple my be distracting up by the screen.

Thanks again to Bottlehead for producing these incredible kits

Deb

 

[Paully]

I thought my earlier modified Foreplay II was a great preamp, so I was surprised how immediately obvious it was that the Foreplay III was truly a significant improvement.  No doubt Bottlehead is the best value in audio.  And nice build.

By the way, do seriously consider some Auricaps or some such for the coupling caps.  I think you will be pleasantly surprised.  They will make awesome even better.

 

[debk]

Thanks


I have the extended Foreplay upgrade to do next and that has Auricaps with it. 

In my Seduction I upgraded the caps to Dynamicaps, which was an improvement.  I also have some Russian teflon capacitors I want to try in the Seduction, but I have not gotten around to it yet.

Debra

 

[Paully]

Never mind on the FP III then.  Grainger and I have been using Russian Teflon caps in everything we could think of, and if the cap we wanted to replace was too big we bypassed it with a Teflon.  We do like them.

 

[Natural Sound]

Nice job Deb. I see you are running some cleartop RCA 12AU7's. Thats what I have in my system right now and I really like them. Oh, and I'm also a big fan of Supertramp on vinyl!

 

[debk]

I completed the Extended Foreplay upgrade.  Fun kit to build, and an improvement to the standard Foreplay.  My first impressions is that it still sounded very warm and rich, but much more detailed than the standard version.. The only disadvantage to  it is that it does not look as cool without the 0D3 tube.

Again I am blown away by the sound quality of the Foreplay

Debra

 

[tsingle999]

That is really cool looking! What speakers are you thinking of building? Taran

 

[debk]

I have never built speakers before, so I bought a pair of Tritrix kits from parts-express.  They are inexpensive and easy to build.  My forte is not in woodworking, and I prefer not to use power saws.  If I hurt my hands I can't work, and then I would not be able to buy anymore Bottlehead kits.  These cabinet parts are all pre cut out, so assembly will not be difficult. 

Deb

 

[SteveH]

The TriTrix kit is a great deal.  I bought the kit before they were selling the knock down cabinets (probably couldn't have afforded shipment to Canada anyway) so I had to build my own cabinets.  They sounded great (since sold them), but I was using them with a SS amp.  It will be interesting to get your observations on how they sound with tubes.

Steve

 

[debk]

I just started building them.  I upgraded the caps and added a bypass cap on the high freq. side.  I don't have a tube amp yet, just a tube preamp and phono stage.  Till I get a tube amp I will be using an Emotiva UPA-2 to drive them.

Deb

 

[Paul Birkeland]

I'd be very interested in knowing how well the tritrix speakers mate with Paramounts, perhaps I will venture down that road in the near future as an experiment.