Buy a BH gem. Once in a lifetime opportunity. BH "Big Pre" headphone amp and pre

[xcortes]

With Doc´s permission I'm offering here my beloved Big Pre amp. Before asking why take a look at the Mexican Peso and Mexican Bolsa after the US elections! 3.5k plus shipping is all it takes to own this jewel.

This is the amp than Dan "Doc. Bottlehead" Schmalle built for the Paul Stubblebine studio a few years ago. This amp is la creme de la creme. It was awesome when originally built for the 6c45pi tubes. But I can be snobbish at times so I asked Dan to convert it to WE 437A tubes. And that baby that grammy winner Paul Stubblebine used to do his mastering went up another notch.

It's a fully shunt regulated one stage amp with WE 437a amps and Peerless TL404 autoformers, with different output impedances and three inputs.

Dan also built for me a tape head preamp in matching veneer and I purchased and had serviced an NOS Ampex 300. These three pieces, together with my Sony mdr-r10s made the best headphone system in the world. No doubts!

Unfortunately I have four kids and a tough job and I was only able to listen to it very occasionally. The little time I can devote to music can't be with headphones. It's an awesome preamp as well, but without a dedicated room I have to use my living room and with eight amps powering my horns the preamp has to sit on the back bookcase and she doesn't fit. So I decided to sell it along with the Sonys.

It can be configured for balanced sources with a 600ohm input impedance or single ended ones with a 10K input impedance.

As Dan said, all of their tricks are included along with very nice exotic parts. He cried when he sold it and I will too. But having it here is just a distraction. In his own words "that WE437A amp includes what we have learned in the past ten years. The amp came back to us and circuit was updated to our latest standards when we converted to 437As last year. So it has a particularly cool combination of our latest circuit tricks and some rather exotic and rare parts like the TL404s, dual mono MQ power transformers and filter chokes, Daven fine and coarse attenuators and custom Jupiter parafeed caps that I would not be able to source anymore". BTW, this is the amp that made famous the TL404 autoformers.

I paid 7.5k before the conversion to 437As and before Dan added the latest developments. I'm selling it with two pairs of 437As (one matched by ear in the pre itself by Dan, the other purchased separately and still NOS). The 437As alone are probably worth north of 2k.

If the buyer is in the US I'm pretty sure I can convince Dan to give the baby a certificate of good health before she goes to her new owner.

I have a Pelican case that was purchased specifically for this amp so that it can travel safely.

I can accept paypal or a transfer to my bank in the US. Please ask any questions and I'll be glad to answer them or discuss the amp in more depth.

This amp was used by Doc B in his VSAC 2008 aweome system and then at different shows to demonstrate the Tape Project tapes. Finally let me link a couple of mentions of the amp:

http://db.audioasylum.com/mhtml/m.html?forum=magnequest&n=2217&highlight=jupiter&r=&search_url=%2Fcgi%2Fsearch.mpl%3Fsearchtext%3Djupiter%26b%3DAND%26topic%3D%26topics_only%3DN%26author%3D%26date1%3D%26date2%3D%26slowmessage%3D%26sort%3Dscore%26sortOrder%3DDESC%26forum%3Dmagnequest

http://db.audioasylum.com/mhtml/m.html?forum=bottlehead&n=78900&highlight=long+gestation&r=&search_url=%2Fcgi%2Fsearch.mpl%3Fsearchtext%3Deichmann%26b%3DOR%26topic%3D%26topics_only%3DN%26author%3D%26date1%3D%26date2%3D%26slowmessage%3D%26forum%3DALL


Saludos

[Doc B.]

I have images somewhere but I will have to dig for them. Here's a couple interior shots I found that were taken after the WE437A update.

[Doc B.]

And some more pics -

[xcortes]

Thanks Doc!

[marantzfan]

Wow.  Just, wow. 

[mcandmar]

I have always been fascinated by that amplifier, and equally inspired.  I can only imagine what the parts would cost if you wanted to recreate it as its mostly made from unobtainium!

[creechg]

Oh my...

What a beauty!  And what a wonderful hobby that we all share.  Truly something to be thankful for.

(I will surely check my bank account now everyday until this sells, and then a little longer afterwards...)

[Doc B.]

Some very random commentary -

Those opus type projects always have a story behind them. I built that one because I could see the superultra headphone amp idea brewing clear back in 2003 when the audiophile headphone business was much smaller than it is today. It uses a modular cabinet that I had powder coated with copper vein, at a time when that was relatively new too. No CNC machine handy, and laying out all the pass through holes and such and drilling them on a drill press was challenging. I searched around for a nice bookmatched veneer for the front, and found that piece of lacewood after sharing some enthusiasm about the look of it from John Tucker. PJ worked up a nice relay activated B+ delay and worked up the operating point for the 6C45. I did pretty much all of the initial build.

I had hoped to have it finished for VSAC 2003 but ran out of time so it was on static display in our room, about 80% complete. I was still working out the extended stainless shafts running in Rulon bushings that mount the Daven control knobs. The parafeed caps were a one-off as far as I know, Jupiters potted in metal cans. Really lovely sound. The MQ TL-404s were from the very first run that Mike made. A lot of the wire was some high speed low drag shielded Teflon stuff from Boeing surplus. The switches are all premium Electroswitch - which really runs the cost of a project up.

The shunt regs use EL84s. Overkill, but I thought that was a pretty elegant approach. All of the inputs and ground lifts, phase inversion, etc. made for a lot of wiring in the back, which was made a little more approachable with the inclusion of some custom made single point ground rings that bolt to the chassis and have 8 or so holes arranged in a ring.

I did finally get the project finished after VSAC, and I took it to the very first RMAF in 2004, where it was used with a Nagra IV-s playing some dubs from Paul Stubblebine, and a pair of HD600s. Srajan Ebaen said it was the best sound of the show. I chuckled to myself when I went back to RMAF with Bottlehead gear eight years later and there was this huge CanJam headphone room with lots of manufacturers pitching high end headphone amps. Bunch of late-comers...

When we did the last round of updates for Xavier, PB handled the construction. He converted the tube sockets to novals for the 437As and updating the C4S boards, which had always been a weak point in the layout.

I guess everyone knows that the concept was transferred to the Mainline design as a more reproducible, kit-build friendly format. Considering the exotic parts and the cabinet (let alone the hours I put in!!) Xavier's price is a steal.

[Paul Birkeland]

Wow, that's a very generous price for what's inside that enclosure (both in terms of time and parts), and including the tubes too! 

[johnsonad]

And as a plug for Xavier, he and I have sold gear back and forth to each other over the past five years.  He packs items very well and neither of us has ever had a problem shipping back and forth to each other from the US to Mexico and vis versa.