Who's a lucky boy then?

[Oldpinkman]

How many birthdays?



OMG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Clive197]

Very nice. HAPPY BIRTHDAY

[Oldpinkman]

Thank you clive. Technically its not my birthday until st paddys day. That makes me a very lucky little boy indeed

[Oldpinkman]

Lest nobody has guessed ... yes that is a pip2!!!!!

And the long awaited return of the silent quad 405-2

[Firebottle]

Looking forward to the review Richard

Cheers, Alan

[cloth-ears]

Nice 405-2. Has it been modded?

[Oldpinkman]

Hi Bob

Yes (not by me, except for the controversial hardwiring)
It's just been re-capped
Previously it had the usual op-amp and bridge mods
This time, Owen has taken the electrolytic "properly" out of the signal path - don't ask me how.

He left it on powering his ESL53's whilst Sue and I chatted and had coffee, to make his point that it was silent - because when he said "sh" "what can you hear"? The answer was "nothing". Maybe my ears were fuddled with road noise from the long drive, but even with my ear to the speaker it's completely silent - I had to check there was power running to it. He played a CD through it and it sounded great, but speakers on the floor, lent against an arm chair, seated off axis....

Will have a wee listen on my system today.

But I want to get that Pip 2 fired up. It may be a huge damp squib, since he was too busy to test the boards, but just dug it out of the loft. But if I can run power to it and works....

[cloth-ears]

I upgraded one for a friend a few years back. It was a real hummer at the start, a common problem I believe. I changed all the caps and op-amp and adjusted the input gain from 0.5V to 1.2V. After the mods it was totally silent having a SNR of about 105db. Also the DC offset was zero and I measured the distortion at 0.004. A very underrated amplifier.

[Oldpinkman]

Well I've just been a really bad boy and sneaked a quick listen to Joan Armatrading "Love and Affection" and Katie Melua "Down and Out" and I have to say it is "welcome back gorgeous".

It is not as good as it could be. The wiring loom is original, and on testing Owen noted that the boards were significantly less noisy out of the box than installed, but apparantly the noise was so far down this time even with the standard loom, it went on the "to do" list.

I can't believe how good it is. Especially after how rude Owen was about the design (not rude really - he pointed out it was built to a price, and even though he has just done a current dumper himself, and was getting excited about doing a hifi one, he has concluded that starting with class B and fixing the faults is approaching the problem from the wrong end). That said it is a seriously good amp. The poor old Arcam was doubtless an honest little chap, bags of effortless power, very quiet, no obvious flaws, and stepped willingly into the breach, but I was just never happy listening to anything on it apart from Blue Rays and Liverpool on Sky Sports. Now I have the Quad back, I can see the Arcam was "in your face" - almost the same "fatigue" I associate with red-book cd hardness (I remember that article you showed me Bob - but I still notice it).

With the Quad the soundstage seems to go back and spread, and there is just no "ear hurt". Rich, detailed, I feel some Martin (realysm42) style eulogising coming on. And that was with £5 interconnects Owen made up for me. Imagine what real cables would sound like!! Cancel the request for a loan of the Integral AK - I'll ponce an FX off you instead when I'm down. (Still want to get the boards out though).

Couple of interesting points - the Quad is quieter (ie no noise) but also not so loud - have to turn up the volume pot quite a bit more, and even though I didn't get a sound meter to it, I think that is real volume not absence of fatigue. Both nominally 100wpc. And (going back to my earlier discussion with Martin T and Marco) surface noise seems MUCH less intrusive - as in absent on Joan Armatrading. It was only a sneaky listen before work, but even so, seemed really obvious.

Bliss!

[Oldpinkman]

I need to apologise for some of my comments about Pip construction quality. Well - note that they don't extend to the Pip 2. I realise now, its probably 20 years since I've seen one, and although I used one plenty, never had to attempt any servicing beyond changing headers. Now I am faced with adapting one to a conventional power supply***, I realise just how much better it was mechanically, never mind sonically (relatively little imo - but we'll see if I change my mind if and when it powers up)

Pip1 was a fabulous sounding ergonomic nightmare. I understand the advantages of them, but I just don't get along with Din plugs and sockets, so if I do get Pip2 working, I think I am going to refit the Pip 1 boards in a conventional chassis, side by side, with flying leads to chassis mount rca sockets. Apart from the fact that I can't solder Din connections without burning a lot of flesh, every time you want to swap amps, you have to swap bloody cables too. In addition, the top board sat over the main circuit board, suspended at the back by its board mount din sockets with one tiny screw each to the chassis, and at the front by 2 ribbon cables connecting the top and bottom boards, and the switch PCB.

By contrast, Pip 2 has 4 rigid steel board supports placed at appropriate points to support the top PCB, with the base PCB screwed to a steel chassis shelf. The power control board is similarly properly supported, as are the control switches - which are no longer "structural". Of course there were the improvements I remember like all the switching being by sealed gold plated relays. There are even crimps on the power switch lead Stan! At this rate, if you ask me nicely, I might get brave enough to lift off the top board and photograph the business end of the machine.

*** Although, as far as I am aware, always designed to be mains or battery, Pip 2 was I believe only ever sold in the battery variant. This added another box, and a lot of bucks , and not a small amount of service and after sales support hassle, for a real but small improvement in sound (like DC on DaCapo). For the minute I just want to get it powered. It's creator seems to think he can come up with a ripple free SMPS at some point, but that's for another day. 2 big fat electrolytics should do a reasonable job...

Just need to get some steel sheet cut, drilled and painted, and work out what all those f****** wires on the transformer do