My take on the BeePre
- Thread starter johnsonad
- Start date
Very interesting impressions Aaron. The Russian caps always prove to be great values. I did note that the KBGs are offered in 10uf 200V versions. They're rather large at 65mm x 35 mm x 108 mm, but maybe some creative mounting might work. One thing I noticed was the +/- 10% tolerance, so you might want to get four and hope that two are close enough to be a good match. Please let us know your findings when the Jupiters are burnt in.
johnsonad
New member
A small update. I'm really enjoying the pairing if the BeePre and S.E.X. amp so far but with this large change I've got to re-learn the sound if the system before tweaking any more. I've found one area to revisit and that's the noise transmission through the BeePre.
With the Quad amp I had it to an extremely low level due to compensating for the extreme gain of the Quad. The SEX does not have this gain and I'm now hearing more of the ring through the BeePre tubes. So far I have Herbies rings on both the EL84's and 300B's, lead rings on the 300B's and Herbies Tenderfeet under the chassis. The BeePre is 6 feet away from the left speaker against a wall. Not ideal but it's the best I can do with this room at the moment. If I sit next to the speaker with my ear near the large driver and talk in the direction of the BeePre I can hear it ring through the speaker at a low level. It seems to only excite the tubes in a certain frequency range, around a males voice level and a little lower.
The vibration is both air and chassis born and efforts are focused on these two areas. For the airborne vibration I'm going to place some dense rock wool between the preamp and the direction of the speaker. For the chassis born vibration I'm going to try the same approach that worked well with my Altec horns and place Dynamat Xtreme on the underside of the base plate. My decibel weighted multimeter is in for service but once it returns I should be able to give some hard numbers to these efforts.
One last thing, the SEX amp has no business sounding this good!
With the Quad amp I had it to an extremely low level due to compensating for the extreme gain of the Quad. The SEX does not have this gain and I'm now hearing more of the ring through the BeePre tubes. So far I have Herbies rings on both the EL84's and 300B's, lead rings on the 300B's and Herbies Tenderfeet under the chassis. The BeePre is 6 feet away from the left speaker against a wall. Not ideal but it's the best I can do with this room at the moment. If I sit next to the speaker with my ear near the large driver and talk in the direction of the BeePre I can hear it ring through the speaker at a low level. It seems to only excite the tubes in a certain frequency range, around a males voice level and a little lower.
The vibration is both air and chassis born and efforts are focused on these two areas. For the airborne vibration I'm going to place some dense rock wool between the preamp and the direction of the speaker. For the chassis born vibration I'm going to try the same approach that worked well with my Altec horns and place Dynamat Xtreme on the underside of the base plate. My decibel weighted multimeter is in for service but once it returns I should be able to give some hard numbers to these efforts.
One last thing, the SEX amp has no business sounding this good!
johnsonad
New member
The airborne isolation with rock wool failed. It could be that my voice is enough to cause resonance through my cheap home made rack and cause some vibration. Who knows but it's low enough I can live with it and I don't hear anything outwardly different when listening to music which is all that really matters.
I'm having a very hard pulling myself away from the BeePre/SEX combo. Thankfully it's Sunday!
I'm having a very hard pulling myself away from the BeePre/SEX combo. Thankfully it's Sunday!
It might help to add some weight to the rack.
All right, in the interest of honesty and self disclosure, I do have some stuff "hidden" behind the TV in the entertainment system build. But, still, how much shit do you have to display at one time? Put your best stuff out there. The rest goes in the closet. The beauty of that is that she forgets about how much crap you have when you want a new piece! See! Smart haaa?
johnsonad
New member
The Dynamat Extreme came in and I applied it to the inside of the wood base and to the available under spaces of the chassis plate. When changing volume on the Bee Quiet it made a slight difference in the length of the ring decay but nothing to write home about. I notice no difference in the airborne ring so it was quickly removed. In my application, using EML tubes, I want to remove heat as quickly as possible. The Dynamat added a layer or two of insulation and the reduction in ring wasn't enough to justify it. Besides, you don't continually change volume when listening so the reduction was a mute point.
I'm going to try other means of mechanically isolating the BeePre and hopefully reducing that airborne ring effect but it's low on the priority list. It is sounding better than ever and I've got a couple of other plans in shippment that I'll post on once tested. The Jupiter's will get a second chance in a month or so once I get a good feel for the BeePre/SEX combo. These two sound amazing with my Altec's so much so that I'm kicking myself in the ass for not trying the SEX amp earlier.
I'm going to try other means of mechanically isolating the BeePre and hopefully reducing that airborne ring effect but it's low on the priority list. It is sounding better than ever and I've got a couple of other plans in shippment that I'll post on once tested. The Jupiter's will get a second chance in a month or so once I get a good feel for the BeePre/SEX combo. These two sound amazing with my Altec's so much so that I'm kicking myself in the ass for not trying the SEX amp earlier.
