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HH Scott 121c's pre-amp restore - the ultimate vintage tube preamp set-up?









I just finished restoring these HH Scott 121c's for a friend who is an avid record collector and 78 enthusiast. One look at these mono pre-amps and you can easily see why a record guru would love them!










After a complete restore, they sound astonishing.. Quite a complicated pre- amp. The power supply was not too bad, I used 2 Panasonic poly-film filters in the first two stages that I installed behind the panel. I ordered the Panasonics because they were the only ones that would fit behind the slim rear compartment. Down stream, I used 2 JJ 50/50s and Nichicon 25/25s for the by-pass caps. The cases are custom ones I make specially for my friends, the units themselves were in nice cosmetic shape when I received them so just some minor clean up..









The couplings caps underneath and behind the panel were plentiful to say the least. These guys each have over 30 caps in each unit making for a total of over 60 for the restore.. so going all PIO was not financially practical. So I picked and chose my battles here and used the Sprague orange drops for all the low value, low voltage caps and bumped up some of the values in the high voltage, high value areas with a few PIO K40's..









I have restored the HH Scott 130 and the HH Scott LC21 preamp, which is kind of a simple version of the 130.. They are both excellent pre-amps with similar architecture. Very authentic and musical sound production with just some amazing beefy low end.. However the fidelity of these 121's and their very different design, is something even beyond those fine stereo pre-amps Scott made. The ability to finely dial in the sound on your record is impressive and not as intrusive as you might think. very subtle and delicate adjustment controls..





Obviously using two mono pre-amps, the stereo separation is just out of this world, to say the least..If you can deal with the pain of having to adjust controls on both units it's worth the trouble. These also have the amazing warm and powerful bass response that show up in the later stereo models. They look excellent as most Scott products do. Very well built and designed I can't say enough about them. The vocals and upper details just burst out on the 121's where the 130 and LC21 are a bit more laid back. The clarity and musical precision seems more accurate than most vintage pre-amps. I am so impressed I give up describing these, I have run out of adjectives, so lets just leave it there. I am trying very hard to figure how I can pack these up and get them back their owner. I have been doing some burn in on my system and I am thinking, man how can I send these back!! I have already dropped some hints that they may not be going home too soon :)





I wont kid you, these are a lot of work and planning, but well worth the investment..very unique..to start with I don't think I have ever seen any restored pairs for stereo. After I got into restoring them, I kind of figured out why you don't see them, quite a bit of work...and being "older-older" you have to replace a lot!



enjoy...

Jeff


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Topic - HH Scott 121c's pre-amp restore - the ultimate vintage tube preamp set-up? - mr9iron 17:10:04 01/02/15 (21)

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