Douk Audio Mini Valve Tube Phono Turntable Preamplifier MM Stereo Class A Preamp

Posted on January 24, 2017 by Fordiebianco

Quite the title, innit? This is the official (well, the seller’s) title of the newest piece in my one of my audio chains. Do I have more than one? Embarassingly, yes. I know. The best girlfriend ever fortunately has never been able to identify the small black boxes that appear and disappear on the IKEA shelf next to the TV and usually doesn’t notice when there’s one more or less. At present there’s one more. The “Douk Audio Mini Valve Tube Phono Turntable Preamplifier MM Stereo Class A Preamp”. Which it, I can reassure you, it is what it says on the tin. I wasn’t aware that there were class A preamps (with tubes no less) but a quick Google search confirmed that this wasn’t a marketing gag. On the other hand, I have seen catchier pre-amp names. Saga or Lync come to mind.

Anyway, the above mentioned piece of kit has been available for on ebay and various retailers of Chinese Hi-Fi and for £54 is not so expensive that when it explodes it leaves a particular bitter taste in your mouth (apart from the chemicals and the small glass tube pieces in your chin) but dear enough to be moderately reassuring. Douk Audio is one of the brands of Shenzhen Cavins Technology ( Nobsound [yes, really] being the other one), and they seem to be flooding the market with affordable tube gear for tube-curious . Read the classic audio geek/nerd/anorak sites like DIYaudio or Audiokarma , and you get the impression that these things are walking, er, delivered death traps, full of unsafe soldiering, incomplete grounding, dodgy contacts. Well, this one didn’t have point to point soldering but – as far as I can see – comes on a PCB board. Delivery took reasonable 5 days and after unboxing, this was what I found in the little package:

…which, after a bit more unpacking, revealed this (sorry, didn’t have a banana available):

The tubes are 2 small 6J1 (apparently not the bee’s knees in the audio world).

Putting the little pre-amp together and hooking it up between my turntable and my amplifier (the lovely Musical Paradise MP-301 MkIII) suddenly gave me an all tube audio chain.

First impressions: it works. And it’s silent. Having had issues with noisy tubes before, the little preamp was completely quiet, and even turning the amp up to max didn’t reveal any extra noisiness. So far so good.

Second impression: listening to my vinyl test panel (ABC: Show Me; Matt Bianco: Summer Song; Donald Fagen: Century’s End) it turns out they are bit bright. Not in an unpleasant way, but you can definitely tell they favour the upper frequencies. This improved after a few hours (and with higher volume) but according to the ~~lore~~ web one is supposed to exchange them with some higher quality tubes which I will do. For the moment the thing works and I have no qualms about the purchase and the best girlfriend is happy because she likes tubes (she likes the glow).

Phew.

What’s Left But To Wallow In Nostalgia?

Posted on January 17, 2017 by Fordiebianco

Hi there.

These days it seems to be the usual thing for me to apologise to you for not blogging sooner.

Well, I’m sorry.

Also, Twitter seems to do it for me these days. 140 characters, wham, bam, thank you mam. What other medium forces you to critise the health secretary in only one sentence. There seems to be a lot of this about at present. Critising the government, I mean. The one in the UK, to be exact. I don’t even want to imagine what it must be like to be an U.S. American these days. As Charlie Brooker said: “I think there is something wrong with my television. It’s showing me images and sounds from a universe I don’t recognise.” Consequently, for old social liberals of the continental sort there is not much to celebrate these days. If I ever meet Francis Fukuyama I will certainly I have a few choice words for him: ‘The End of History’ my arse. With society around us becoming coarser, more polarised and all together more unpleasant, it’s to time to switch off the news, unsubscribe from the political twitter feeds and focus on the pleasant things in life, such as 12″ remixes from the eighties.

Huh?

Indeed. I personally wouldn’t have come up with the topic myself (though admittedly I do hear a few of these), but my favourite corner of the internet, the UK’s ‘Guardian’ news paper last week asked its readers for the best 12″ remixes of the eighties. The response was impressive, with over 750 entries by old people like myself. As befitting the Guardian, the choiced ranged from the daft (early Kylie, The Goodies, Italo Disco) the so-so (T’Pau [who names their group after an old fictional alien. tsstss], Soft Cell, Peter Gabriel), the rare (Kariya, Act, Barrington Levy), the irrestible (Sister Sledge, Mantronix, Thompson Twins) to the sublime (Matt Bianco, Frankie goes to Hollywood, David Bowie, Prince, Freeez). To make a point, let’s just remind you of this lovely example how to make an (at times hilarious) 12″.

So, instead of losing (even more) of my hair by worrying about the world turning into some populistic hell hole, I’ll rather work on my perfect, 10 hour Spotify playlist of amazing eighties 12″ tracks. Suggest some via Twitter!

A Brexit Limerick

Posted on July 3, 2016 by Fordiebianco

There was a young lady from Troon,
who voted for Brexit last June.
Now the doctors are gone, there is no new dawn,
and she regrets that she partied too soon.

Here’s Johnny

Posted on April 9, 2016 by Fordiebianco

I remember it quite vividly: it was 1985, and I was sitting in the only pub of a tiny coastal village on the North Sea, nursing a small beer and staring out the window, enjoying the sunset. The pub had one of those small CRT TVs sitting on the bar, and because I was the only customer, the bar keeper asked whether he could turn it on, switching the channel to a clip show showing the latest music videos (remember those? Big thing in the eighties, especially for countries who didn’t get MTV yet [when they were still playing music]), of course presented by a person with big hair. Between the usual Michael Jackson, Madonna and A-Ha there was suddenly the most enormous big band sound filling the pub and an amazingly catchy tune made both the barkeeper and me look up and check out the clip. On the small screen where 4 obviously British chaps with a large big band doing their thing, miming away with vim and vigour and 3 minutes and 24 seconds later they were gone. I couldn’t quite understand the presenter afterwards, but I caught the word ‘idlewild’, though I didn’t know whether this was the band’s name or the song title. A few days later I tried to find the record at my various local record shops (all of them history), but nobody had heard of the track and that was that. Over the years I tried to find the record from time to time, but all I could find was stuff from the Scottish band ‘Idlewild’ which was definitely not what I was looking for. But just a few days ago, I stumbled over a link on youtube, and there they were: the same video as in 1985, with the same 4 chaps with their funny eighties pop star hairdos and the big band sound. Have a look:

Weren’t they glorious? Isn’t the song amazing?

They were called ‘Here’s Johnny’, from Liverpool and unfortunately dropped by their record company after only a few singles, not even having a single album under their belt (or a wikipedia entry – how sad is that). There is an comment under an (excellent quality) soundcloud entry of the song by Colin McKay, their songwriter:

That’s me . . . Still can’t believe nobody bought it!

True. Nevertheless, I now bought the 12″ off ebay, and while my little contribution unfortunately will not find its way into Colin’s pockets, I can blast the song now, 31 years later, through the house while I dance through the living room like a complete idiot, yelling ‘I start to shake, I start to tremble’ .

Mission accomplished, Colin.