Passive pre for 303.

[southall-1998]

303 lovers,

Have a Quad 303 that I want to use in a second room.

Any passive pre's that will blend nicely with the 303?

Thanks.

[DSJR]

Anything you like, from the now vintage QED one that Quad themselves (well, their service dept) used to recommend in preference to their own, to the outlandish confections so beloved of audiophools - take your pick :)

[Macca]

I've heard the QED doing a good job with the 303. May not be that easy to source one, though.

[southall-1998]

What is the model number of this QED Passive pre??

[Macca]

It is just the QED passive pre. They only did one AFAIK. They did a neat little integrated as well.

[southall-1998]

This one- http://www.hi-fi-insight.com/qed-ma-34-passive-pre-amp.html

[The Grand Wazoo]

That's one, but they did another series before that with the knob on top.

[Marco]

Any reason, Shane, why it must be passive? I've always had much better results with active preamps (particularly valve ones), than passives....

Marco,

[tubehunter]

http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/pga2311.pdf

[southall-1998]

Any reason, Shane, why it must be passive? I've always had much better results with active preamps (particularly valve ones), than passives....

Marco,

Don't mind active, Marco. Welcome to suggest some Valve pre's :)

[julesd68]

My Audio Note M-Zero pre and Quad 405-2 were a fantastic combo ...

[The Grand Wazoo]

QED did make what they called an active/passive pre-amp that was supposed to be the best of both worlds. I think it was called the Vector or something like that.

[Marco]

Don't mind active, Marco. Welcome to suggest some Valve pre's :)

What's the budget, dude?

Marco.

[southall-1998]

What's the budget, dude?

Marco.

Not very much, Marco. £200-350.

[Marco]

In that case, you're more in the land of passives... You've tried a Croft preamp, haven't you? Their basic model is about the only one around that sort of price range, and it's excellent.

What Duncan (Tubehunter) linked to is also liable to be good, as I've heard the passives he's used in his system, and all have been excellent :)

Marco.

[DSJR]

I said to Shane at the time that he should have kept the Croft Micro Basic, since the two sonic signatures blend so beautifully together...........

Marco, the reason why a passive pre works so well with the 303 and 405's is that they are very sensitive as supplied and have a high input impedance, allowing a passive pot to be used to drive them with no frequency response penalties (how I understand it to be) - the 33 preamp has a low output capability and it overloads on its output if pushed too hard, so the 303 and 405 needed to be more sensitive accordingly. In fact, to use either generation of these amps with a modern active preamp usually requires the input gain to be reduced somewhat (easy to do on both models).

My advice to Shane would be to get another Croft, preferably a Micro 25 this time if a good used one comes up and change the feedback resistors in the 303 from 22K to either 68K (correct for modern drivers) or even 100K, to give greater volume control range. The 303 in good working order is perfectly capable of reproducing the extra subtlety available from the "25" although I must admit the slight "rawness" in the basic model won't at all be emphasised by the 303 and might inject a little more "life" on percussive tracks.

Hope this helps a bit and that I have it correct...

[Alan]

I recently spent some time with a prototype SS amp (class A/B) which had a class A pre, and it was really something. We also put my Lightspeed (pasive LDR) in, which was possibly a little more 'invisible', maybe (just maybe) better tonally, but the soundstage had totally collapsed. That was the one and only time I heard a decent passive roundly beaten by an active.

Shane, if you're interested I have an Eva 2 I no longer need. Three inputs & a remote, just serviced (new LDR boards fitted).