Installed bulk foil resistors in phono amp

@noromance
VAC offers an "SE" upgrade for their standalone Renaissance phono stage that adds some 30+ of those Z-foil resistors and Jupiter copper/beeswax coupling caps. Still not a cheap stage by any means, but $14.4K is a hell of lot less than 60 - 80! Unfortunately a lot of those Z-foils are allocated for the MC loading, and I bypass it all to come into MM because I prefer other SUT's to the built-in Lundahls. 

I’ve had both the SE and non-SE versions of this Renaissance phono in my system, currently own the SE. Both sound amazing. The SE does have extra clarity and detail but honestly the extra warmth of the non-SE ($10K) can be appealing too. Can’t go wrong either way if you have a high-end upstream to take advantage of it; they both make magic.

But how high can you go? You can’t keep increasing the value hoping for more and more rejection! Maybe the designer deemed 1k enough.

@noromance 

That's right. With a 12AX7 10K still gives you plenty of bandwidth. In guitar amps that value is a lot higher, as the intent is to roll off the input considerably more.


LEDs can work quite well to set up the bias.

Thanks guys. @mulveling @atmasphere 
If my point-to-point wired Croft 25R wasn't such an insanely-tight nest of connections, I'd replace some more resistors!

Cool thread @noromance and thanks for sharing the modification- for those who don’t understand how tight things are near tube sockets on a Croft - you can see a photo of a Croft RIAA - RS ( single chassis ) phono stage in my Poverty Bay virtual system page - Glen is a wizard and builds great sounding gear