Show us your Pre-Amp

Thought you was loving the mr eddie pre ben? You still got that one?

dj jammin wrote: Dub: take some photos inside the unit.. may well help tell if its made by baracudda.. i have serviced 3 or 4 different barras so the psu, lay-out etc might help identify the builder..

odc04r wrote: Bloody hell, better then some I've seen and there's at least twisted pairs of wires in there but why do all classic pre's look like someone set a bomb off in a warehouse of wire and Maplin module kits. I think I can see about 3-4 different types of circuit board in there too (including boards dangling in air). Takes all sorts I guess, be boring otherwise. And you do have to be careful applying modern standards to much older gear, builder must have done something right if it's still ticking.

+1, those old engineers were fairly ground breaking for their time, not even a case of putting modules that already existed together, the requirements of the soundsystem came first and equipment designed and built especially for this. No digital pcb printing, boards etched and tracked by hand. Real dedication cottage industry.  Wasn't Barracuda one of the first to use smps in his equipment?

The one pre I've had a really good look inside (a BCD Electronics) had each front-panel control joined to the PCB inside by 30cm of shielded cable. So you could get the front panel off quite easily, but it could charitably be described as "having some noise issues requiring careful gain staging" - ie it hums and buzzes and hisses like a BASTARD, due to all that long wiring inside. You have to fire a hot signal into it and not turn the outputs up very much, if you want to have anything like a signal-to-noise ratio.

I think I'm inlove again