I'm happily listening to my R2R rig today after a prolonged absence. I had some hum issues I finally worked out. After some spring cleaning of polishing RCA Jack grounds and cleaning tube pins I still had some 60 Hz hum only when the tape player was plugged in. As soon as I unplugged the player the hum went away. Thankfully I had a ground defeating plug and that did the trick!
Another issue was that with lower gain driver tubes in my Paramount-ish amps and now Elrog 300B's, I've lost a lot of gain and couldn't get it high enough with the Eros Tape alone so I added another gain stage between the Eros and BeePre in the form of a second preamp. I'm using an interesting old Pioneer C-Z1 preamp as my phono stage. It has an aux input and it's just what the doctor ordered! Another 10dB of gain is all that was needed to achieve a nice volume level.
My wife and I are listening to The Tape Project Jimmy Smith, The Sermon as I type this and it's never sounded better! Thanks again BH team for getting me closer to the music!
