Merging 3 into 1; Spring project 2013

[Alonzo]

Hi,
I need some opinions.  I'm thinking about a spring project, weather's getting warmer and I can spend some time in the garage.  I was thinking of improving my Quickie with better switches and pot and along comes the BeePree attenuator that I think would be a perfect improvement or definitely worth the effort to see.  Not being able to leave well enough alone, I got to drawing the layout for the Quickie and thought about going AC.  I stopped work to listen to a spectacularily great song that Grainger introduced me to and wait a minute, my Crack sounds excellent, why not put make a preamp out of it?  Now that sheet is trashed and I'm sketching out BeePre volume ==>Crack==>?  well the Crack only puts out a couple of mW but I only need 1 good watt so how about a 2A340 backend to some 99dB horns...

So, how crazy or crazily stupid is this idea?  Combining a Crack with a SR45; making a modified Stereomour or a Frankenstiened Bottlehead Abomination.  I'm thinking external power supply, keep the Crack portion powered by it's own transformer and 2 PT-2's to power the amplifier section.  Get Mike to make up some nickle BH-5 and BH-6's, throw in some Obligatto oilers for there mellow sound...

So, if 3 designs are good independantly, will they at least be 2 times better than normal combined?

I realize I could probably just order the Paramounts and get just as good or better, but I've never been one to do things the easy way...so  what do you think, is it worth the effort?  Are there major technical hurdles? 

Thanks for the opinions,
Alonzo

[Doc B.]

Just a couple thoughts, worth about the paper they are printed on -

I think I'm the odd man out on this - even around the office - but somehow to me running the Quickie on AC defeats the purpose. It's a super quiet circuit and the AC is just gonna be a headache noise-wise. I would spend some effort building a rechargeable battery setup instead. But I am the odd man out.

Also, I think the "DHTness" of the Quickie could be a better match to the resolution of a SR45 amp than Crack might be. The idea of the BeeQuiet grafted to the Quickie makes me chuckle when I think about the cost ratio, but that's not to say that it couldn't sound really good...

[Jim R.]

Alonzo,

I am just taking a wild guess here but again, perhaps the quickie (being DHT and all that) with the beequiet and a stereomour circuit with some goodies like a film cap supply, film bypasses on the cathode resistors, grid chokes, etc. might work nicely and with no cathode follower stages.  You could also go with individual driver tubes for the 45s and shunt regulate them with the other half of each.

I too would probably also leave the quickie as battery poered.

I admit I've been kicking around a similar idea but with a quickie and s.e.x. 2.1 but of course not in the stock chassis.

After my current backlog of projects are done, I do want to do some sort of design perhaps with a dac and/or phono stage built-in -- a reasonably compact, one-box, one power cord design that you plug in, add computer or NAS and speakers, and go.  Of course there will be lots of things that need careful design attention -- like heat and noise management  for starters.

It will be interesting to see what you come up with though.

-- Jim

[Alonzo]

Doc, I've left any fiscal prudence I had long ago with this hobby, 1 cap in my current Quickie costs more than the whole kit.  I'm going to stew on this awhile, since I have a BeeQuiet coming soon I'll still build the "BQuiet Quickie" (couldn't resist  ).  I'll have to go find some copper for the top plate.  It'll be battery powered like my current Quickie +.

Jim, your idea sounds like a great project, I've built a DIY Paradise kit Dac before, I like the idea of a good Dac and Pre together, simple 1 stop shop.  it's something I now need since my Crack and office amp sources are digital.

[2wo]

The DAC and pre combo has always appealed to me, one less box on the rack and for me the fewer interconnects the better...John

[Paul Birkeland]

I'd try building the BeeQuiet into a Quickie, but line power is a real pain.  I did build one line powered Quickie, Doc B. has it at the moment.

[porcupunctis]

I ran a quickie with and HP/Agilent dual power supply for a while.  I thought the results were quite satisfying and I never heard any noise or hum.  Still dead quite.  These power supplies have an awful lot of regulation and filtering though. 

For me, the charm of the quickie is in it's simplicity.  It is a minimalist fantasy of preamps.  No coloration, it just does it's thing and gets out of the way. 

[Paul Joppa]

In case it wasn't obvious to everyone  :^)  the Quickie came about because Doc B was bemoaning the loss of a sub-$100 product - the original Foreplay, 20 years ago or whenever, was $99. (The prototype, by the late George Wright, was built on a metal roof shingle...) I told him it was probably possible if the power supply was not included, and designed it. It was still a bit over $100 but PB came up with the plastic plate which cut the cost just enough.

The great thing about the original Foreplay was that it was cheap enough that nobody felt bad about experimenting with it, modding it, screwing it up, bloating it into unrecognizable weirdness, everything you can imagine and lots that you would never imagine. People were having a ton of fun - and we wanted that again.

Quickie seems to be living up to it's history.