Tweakers' Asylum

Tweaks for systems, rooms and Do It Yourself (DIY) help. FAQ.

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Re: Inside of Gaincard?

Posted by Steve Eddy on May 24, 2002 at 01:28:28:
Nice construction on the passive preamp
Thanks. :)
Now that you've worked with the hybrids, what's your current opinion on those BUF-03s?
Well the two are really rather apples and oranges. The BUF-03 (or any of the various buffer chips) is best suited for impedance buffering, offering a high input impedance and a low output impedance which is ideal for converting the relatively high and variable output impedance of an attenuator into something more suitable for driving cable.
The buffer chips have no voltage gain and limited current gain so you can't quite compare them to a power opamp which gives you voltage gain and a considerable amount of current gain and is intended for driving low impedance loads.
I haven't had anything in my system which uses a BUF-03 for about 6 years and haven't tried any of the newer buffer chips (the PMI BUF-03 is no longer in production as far as I'm aware) so I'm afraid I can't offer much in the way of comparison there. Sorry.
I remember they were all the rage when Stereophile published that Corey Greenberg DIY article in '92.
Hehehe. Yeah. It was the AL-1 that Corey based his DIY version on. This was back when we were all on The Audiophile Network BBS (it was basically the pre-Internet version of the Asylum). Corey saw the press release for the AL-1 in the file area on TAN and asked if I'd help him do a DIY article based on it for Stereophile.
So I gave him the schematics, parts sources, etc. and the rest, they say, his history. :)
Corey's version was actually quite good, improving on the AL-1 with the addition of a tweak or two that Walt Jung contributed. So when I see the kits out there for Corey's version as well as kits that are improvements on Corey's version, I can't help letting my modesty slide a little and get a bit of a prideful smile on my face knowing where it started. :)
I got most of the parts but never did get around to building it.
Hehehe. Know how that goes. But the remnants of all those ill-fated projects can sure come in handy when you're in a pinch. :)
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