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PRIAMP -A tiny valve preamplifier for iphone.
PRIAMP with hardwood iphone / ipod dock. | 
Don't use Apple Stuff?
The PRIAMP also come sans dock.
Just use the universal RCA jacks to get the warm, rich tone of valve amplification from any source.
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CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT MORE AND ORDER NOW!
Audio
freaks may scoff at the "heretical" ( but factual!) claim that one can
get a great, warm tube tone through any decent solid-state home stereo simply by
inserting a tube amplifier anywhere where in the signal path. It's probably
the easiest (and cheapest) way to upgrade your system and
instantly improve the sound quality of highly compressed digital
files like mp3's. Simply connect the PRIAMP output
to the "AUX
IN" jacks of any home stereo and plug your music in.
The PRIAMP accepts input from any media player, sound
card, CD/ record*/ cassette player, any audio source imaginable with "audio out" jack.
Each
PRIAMP is finely crafted, from scratch, by me, here at the CHobbs
Shop, here in Brooklyn.
* for optimum sound quality, phonographic preamplification should include proper RIAA equalization.
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| FISHER 500-B
The
Fisher Company made this model in the early '60s and at the time
was the pinnacle of tube home audio technology.
I literally found this beauty, (which in todays
dollars sold for thousands) in a dumpster directly in front of my
apartment. The cabinet was missing and the chassis( left
exposed) was
completely caked with years of accumulated rust, grime and
general grossness. Amazingly
the faceplate and dial glass were in excellent condition and I
could'nt pass it up. I gave it a basic cleaning inside and out.
and after
replacing the basic stuff, rectifier, caps and a
set of power tubes ( one was smashed, sadly, probably when it was
tossed in the bin,) it fired right up and sounded wonderful right off
the bat. The FM multiplexer was perfectly tuned, the tubes were even
already properly biased! It doesn't get much better than this. Coolest
is the " Stereo Beam - Tuning Eye" tube (shown on the right.)
The bright bars are a visual indicator of radio reception and
slightly overlap when a multiplexed FM station is properly tuned.
The nickel plating on the chassis was so badly damaged that it
really should have been stripped down and painted or re-plated. Not
really willing to go "all the way," I settled on cleaning it up the
best I could and building a new, pretty cabinet to hide the scars.
There were a few chips in the painted bird logo and numbers on the dial glass. Very carefully, I was able to touch up the missing sections with hobby-store model oil enamel applied with a sharpened toothpick. Model Master # 2063 RAF Trainer Yellow, seems to be a near perfect match.
* Fisher 500-B Service Manual and Schematic
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| BOGEN CHB 35-A PA amp- conversion
I found this sweet little amp at a junk shop and
"stole" it for a mere $10. Removing the Bogen's dingey
metal -box enclosure revealed a true gem. Aside from a
little corrosion on the transformers, the chassis was nearly
immaculate. So were the tubes and the large chassis-mounted can
capacitor(rare). These amps make perfect guitar conversions, so
after replacing the paper and electrolytic caps, I rerouted the
various inputs into cascading gain stages. The end result is, in
my opinion, probably the best guitar amp ever. No shit.
This guy goes from clean to warm cream
with real raunchy overdrive when totally cranked.
The sky is the limit when it comes to messing with
the tone stack on a guitar amp , but I actually found the stock tone
provided an excellent range of tone (for my liking) so far its
still untouched. The
speakers the amp is shown with, and currently played through, are another
amazing junk shop find; a pair of vintage celestion 8" dual
cone PA speakers ( I think) from the '60's. I bought them mainly
just intending to just reuse the beautiful walnut / original
tweed grill cabinets , but was pleasantly surprised when I opened them up and looked inside.
Like the Bogen's tone control, probably not the
perfect frequency range for guitar (on paper), but I prefer
this pairing over the other "guitar" speakers I have tried.
* Bogen CHB 35-A PA Amplifier Schematic
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Available
Here!
