Audio Horizons TP 2.0 Preamplifier

Just to keep things into perspective, I am posting my initial e-mail to Victor to which Victor responded in the post I made above:

Victor,
When Joseph initially tried these new output caps and found that he liked them, I'm trying to put things into perspective: at this point you both decided that you liked them. Did you decide then that the power supply needed to be improved to accommodate the new caps or you just wanted to make the power supply larger to improve the preamp in general? I'm trying to figure out at what point did you decide to make a change to the new 2.1 version and why. I'm curious what you said on your recent post on the Audiogon thread about when the power supply was increased from 100V to 140V you noticed increased dynamic swings, yet the top end became soft. I'm trying to understand what this "softness" means. I never felt that the top end was ever soft in my 2.0n. Also, I noticed that on the mainboard with the tubes, in the front of the board are four electrolytic caps. Next to these are smaller film caps. As I recall, the value on the 2.0n smaller caps were .22uf, and they are now .47uf. Can you tell me what this cap value change did to the circuit? The reason I'm asking is that now that I've reverted back to the solo Hovlands by themselves in the outputs, I'm getting a little darker or warmer sound than before. I'm trying to figure out what in the upgrade could be causing this. Basically ,in a nutshell, what I'm trying to do is revert back to the 2.0n which I had before Joseph made his upgrades yet keep key things that would benefit the original configuration. Please be rest assured that I don't intend to make changes to the preamp that would cause damage to the traces to void any warrantee. I'm grateful that Joseph repaired some traces for me during his upgrades as an act of goodwill. Thanks for your help.

Best, Sherod

Hello all i have seen a few mentions of floating the tubes. Do you mean taking the 4 screws out and just letting the board sit or do you put something under it?

Stltrains,

Thanks to RX8man who introduced the idea to add this to Joseph's preamp. Washers are used as a barrier between the board and the screw plate. In my set up, I have an isolation board which takes out subfrequency noise and under the tube board I floated it on three points and stabilized it with tape on each side.

I believe the washers can be supplied by Rx8man as well.

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Victor, does the in-line AC filter serve as part of the grounding for the original AH preamp?

Thanks for the mention La45 !

My kit contains the (slightly) longer screws to match the butyl washers.

I hope Victor sees my last post, otherwise I'll contact him directly about my two questions.

I'm really curious of his mention of a two-chassis preamp and point-to-point wiring,
no boards to float and hopefully ?? a tube regulated power supply, how killer this would sound !

In the very begining, I called Joseph and asked what he thought of a separate power supply, but so much has been happening since that time, he may have forgotten.

Think about it kids, an all-out-assault preamp effort from Joseph ??

As good as the AH 2.0 and 2.1 are, this thing (maybe call it a 2.2) ? could literally smoke any and all competition in its path (probably still very affordable too)

Sherod, you and I would have to keep our curious hands off the insides !!

I can't wait to hear of an actual prototype, this could be very exciting.