Tisbury Audio Mini Passive Pre-amp

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Originally Posted by Marco

Mind you, there's something a bit bonkers [IMO, in a good way] about using an £85 passive preamp with a £5k valve amp... :eyebrows:

Marco.

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Not sure why, its a pot in a box, if the box didnt exist, and the pot was nn the front of your amp, you would have a £5k valve amp with a volume control, if you also had a input selector, your would have a £5k integrated amp. All makes sense. You just moved the pot and input selector to a different box. If you remember Ian spending months finding a preamp, he ended up with that S&B transformer in a box I built for him, thats no difference other than its a transformer version of the same thing, so it can drive longer lines and break noisy grounds. You dont need gain with line inputs and your Cu amp, so it doesn't surprise me at all a good passive works well for you.

I tol' youse it was a goodun, Marco. ;)

Not all passive preamps are born equal by any means, ime.
In my view, the Tizzie beats any Audio Synthesis I've heard in terms of liveliness and dynamics (and I've heard and owned a good few), TVC passives seem overly warm and laidback in comparison, it knocks the likes of the Creek passive into the long grass, and while it is marginally less transparent than the likes of the Glasshouse #1 and the Eva2 LDR I prefer to listen to the Tiz.

Fair points, Nick - and it does sound rather good :)

Don't get me wrong, the Croft still has the edge, but that's the thing: the Tissy isn't being disgraced despite the Croft costing MANY times more! There's also a certain type of sound/style of musical presentation, delivered by good passives, which is rather addictive.

'Soft sounding' or lacking in drive, the Tissy is not! And that's the problem I usually have with passives.

Marco.

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Originally Posted by jandl100

I tol' youse it was a goodun, Marco. ;)

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Aye, yer lugs are not bad! Lol... Tannoys aside, we do tend to agree about a lot of things in audio :)

Marco.

Hmmmm....

This Tissy will work nicely with my spare 303!

S.

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Originally Posted by Macca

I thought it lacked impact in my system. Try playing something where the snare really hits you between the eyes and see if it softens that effect any.

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Martin, my experiences only, so please take it that way - The old AVI preamp I still keep, mainly for extra input switching duties, is incredibly 'neutral' cosmetically and all the info fed it is there, but I recently discovered that it tends to 'force' the sound along a little, giving you the effect you describe. In my case, this made the sound more 'relentless' and not as 'real,' even into an amp normally used with an active line stage. Connecting in my home-made passive preamp (same attenuators as the Tisbury) improved the 'sound' of this amp no end, significantly closing the gap. This power amp has Noble attenuators already and I think I can confirm that my passive preamp takes away next to nothing and adds absolutely nothing as well. Cables used? SSC with the usual AVI (switcher) to passive and then to NVA powers and Klotz 110 or MC5000 to the HH power amp.


P.S. I could be very wrong here, but I think the whole 'thing' about active preamps was in the olden days (;)), preamps needed to have tone and filter control circuits, phono stages and lots of inputs. Tone bypass often sent that active stage into unity-gain, rather than totally bypass the circuit altogether I believe.


Marco, I shortly have a Krell KSA 50S coming my way in need of some TLC. Once I have it working properly, I have the same dilemma regarding preamp choice. My home made jobbie does the sonic goods just fine, but looks a dogs dinner - it just 'won't do' with a bigger Krell :rolleyes: As to whether the Krell will be as good as it's vaunted, well, that's another tale in the making I reckon...

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Originally Posted by DSJR

Martin, my experiences only, so please take it that way - The old AVI preamp I still keep, mainly for extra input switching duties, is incredibly 'neutral' cosmetically and all the info fed it is there, but I recently discovered that it tends to 'force' the sound along a little, giving you the effect you describe. ...

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Dave I know what you mean and that the whole impact thing can be over-egged and therefore not quite right. The Tisbury was the first passive I tried and the transparency on offer was amazing but it was a bit too weak and floppy at the same time. I'm the only person of the many who have tried the Tis here to experience that so I can only put it down to power amp incompatibility. However the NVA P90SA that replaced it had no such issues even with the same power amp.

I used a passive pre (not the Tisbury) for a couple of years. In the end I reverted to an active pre for precisely the reasons Macca gives: the additional transparency came at the cost of a loss of 'impact'.

Quite obviously different people will have different results with the same components (or will have the same results but react differently to them) so as with all such subjective judgements the only final arbiter is your own ears. The Tisbury, being so relatively cheap is fairly risk-free, and the same goes for the NVA because of the 30 day trial period.

I plumbed the tissie in for a couple of days and enjoyed it for its clarity and accuracy, returning my battery powered Capella to active duties had a noticeable improvement in the width and depth of the sound stage.

I didnt play around with the impedance settings on the amps to carefully match the tissie...from past experience this can make a difference. My tissie is a keeper but cant compete with the active capella sonically in my set up.

Horses for courses methinks.

I haven't tried a pukka stepped attenuator yet. The Tisbury attenuator is a ladder type, working as a conventional pot does, rather than individual resistor 'L-pad' in pairs each 'step' as in better quality attenuators. By the way, my stepped attenuators (50k ones used because I play my workroom system very low most of the time) don't 'sound' any better than the film-pots NVA use in their standard controls, but offer me easier matching in the first two or three 'clicks' of operation.