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tubes4hifi PAS3 Aikido board?

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Posted on July 24, 2014 at 09:55:13
Thermionic27609
Audiophile

Posts: 411
Joined: March 29, 2009
 After using it for years with parts upgrades, bypassed bass tone controls, etc.., I'm finally throwing in the towel on my Dynaco PAS-3X and its line stage. I'm tired of the wooly bass and am ready to move on.

I noticed that tubes4hifi now has an Aikido preamp board that drops into the PAS chassis, along with a replacement power supply. Has anyone tried it out? That would be one way forward; another would be building an Aikido line stage from scratch, something I've been thinking about doing for a while...

 

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"building an Aikido line stage from scratch" Yes., posted on July 24, 2014 at 15:30:41
Chip647
Audiophile

Posts: 2652
Location: The South
Joined: December 24, 2012
 Sell your Dynaco and buy a nice aluminum case and a drill press, you will never look back.

 

RE: "building an Aikido line stage from scratch" Yes., posted on July 24, 2014 at 16:46:46
Thermionic27609
Audiophile

Posts: 411
Joined: March 29, 2009
 You are probably right about starting over from scratch.

Here's another idea: When I upgraded the driver board and power transformer of my ST70, I went with an all-polypropylene power supply and built a deeper base for the amp (think McIntosh height) to make room for the capacitors. There's a good bit of unused space in there.

What if I added a 100k stereo stepped attenuator and a source selector switch to the ST70 and installed some RCA jacks on the back? There's room, and that would do also do away with the awkward front-mounted input jacks.

That's basically how my Dyna SCA-35 works. I bypassed its tone controls, and a line out from my DAC through the SCA-35's volume control to the 7199 sounds a lot better than anything run through the PAS3.

 

RE: "building an Aikido line stage from scratch" Yes., posted on July 25, 2014 at 09:11:46
Lee of Omaha
Dealer

Posts: 1800
Location: Omaha NE
Joined: September 8, 2006
 That sounds like a good plan. I've been thinking along the same lines, that it's a good topology to add an input switch to a power amp, thereby crafting a simple integrated amp, and making the phono preamp standalone.

We've used one tubes4hifi board for the ST-70 and it has our hearty endorsement.

 

RE: "building an Aikido line stage from scratch" Yes., posted on July 25, 2014 at 10:05:48
SteveBrown
Audiophile

Posts: 2454
Location: Portland, OR
Joined: November 14, 2002
 Modifying the ST70 to an integrated should be pretty easy to do. You can give up the front octal sockets (only useful for bias testing) and use one for attenuator and one for selector, or if you don't need more than a couple inputs, use the mono/stereo switch for that. Then you could use one octal hole for attenuator and one for bias or a balance control even.

 

RE: "building an Aikido line stage from scratch" Yes., posted on July 25, 2014 at 12:49:47
Thermionic27609
Audiophile

Posts: 411
Joined: March 29, 2009
 Fortunately, my deeper chassis mod gives me more room to mount controls and input jacks.

 

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