Tisbury Audio Mini Passive Pre-amp

[jandl100]

Jerry if it was soo good what have you replaced it with ? I have a friend who is looking for a passive pre and would be interested

Things come and go at Jerry Towers. I just like to try different things.

Currently, I have 2 integrated amps (1 ss, 1 valve - see my siggie below) and another integrated (Virtue Audio class D) is about to arrive. And I have a fab active pre (a Restek) that does some dynamic and other stuff that passives don't while achieving very high levels of clarity for when the next power amp is selected.

But yep, the little Tiz is a great sounding unit, imo. It doesn't quite have the sheer transparency of a good stepped attenuator passive, but it also lacks the tonal starkness that can appear in some systems with passive preamps. I compared it directly with a stepped Glasshouse No. 1 passive pre, and I actually preferred the Tizzie. It was just nicer to listen to.
But I hadn't used it for a while and my kind and generous offer of loaning it out hadn't been taken up since the beginning of the year, so a little bit of shelf space has now been cleared.

[Tarzan]

Has the Sensation arrived yet Jerry?

[Marco]

Just won a Tissy on ebay: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Tisbury-Au...vip=true&rt=nc

I'm going to use it as part of a 'summer system' to reduce the heat from valves in my set-up, during this really hot spell of weather we're having. It'll be interesting to hear how it performs!

Marco.

[struth]

Good little boxes those

[Marco]

Hopefully, dude!

Marco.

[User211]

Yeah they are OK. Had Jerry's in my system and heard it in is.

Alright provided you don't need any active gain obviously. In which case they are NOT OK.

[Marco]

I think I'll be all right on the gain score.

It's mainly for piping some choons out into the garden (via the RPi and Copper amp) and into some Celestion Ditton 15XRs, while we're entertaining friends... The music room where all the kit is, with the current weather, gets like a bloody oven, what with both the Croft and Copper amp using loads of valves.

The Tissy will help sort that out and hopefully provide acceptable sound quality in that application

Marco.

[DSJR]

I don't think you'll find it 'sounds' at all Marco, although I would recommend 'personally' that you keep the interconnects within a couple of metres.

I use a little home made three-input/one output passive preamp and it's incredibly good with amps that I thought should have an active preamp stage driving them. So much so that the HH MOS-FET amp I was given with the LS5/9's has taken on a whole extra layer of delicacy and increased 'emotional connection' that it lacked before with the old AVI preamp driving it (in fairness to the AVI, it prefers several metres of mic cable to remote amps...).

I mention my home-made jobbie because I recently replaced the perfectly worthy 47k pots I was using with the same ones Tisbury use, but in 50k (I had to go on eBay US to find them, but the seller was only too happy to send me a pair to the UK for well under £20). I've since discovered that 10k is fine as well, by the way. No sonic difference between the Chinese attenuators and the film-pots I was using before, but I like the tracking on the first two notches of the attenuators


Something else, if I may be so bold ('course I am). So many active preamps over the years have been a real bane in the life of 'High Fidelity Audio' in my opinion and experience, the colourations and/or veiling of detail they add to the recipe being quite severe in some revered US models I remember. As far as I can see, a passive preamp, as long as the matching isn't severe, shouldn't add anything at all and definitely shouldn't take anything away - Like others here and elsewhere, it comes as a bit of a shock to start with, but after a while to acclimatise, I'm going to find it very hard to go back to an active preamp (I've a Krell KSA50S coming and in a way, haven't a bleedin' clue what to drive it with, status wise - cough!)

[User211]

I've got the same problem with 30 odd valves running last year - when it was really hot I was screwed...

Somehow last night's session was OK but about to start tonight's.

I think my Air Tight passive is better (scored on the Gon years ago and it saw years of use in my system) but it isn't much better and the cost difference is massive.

[Marco]

Hi Dave,

I don't think you'll find it 'sounds' at all Marco, although I would recommend 'personally' that you keep the interconnects within a couple of metres.

All my interconnects are 0.5m (I've always believed in keeping cables are short as possible), so no issues there

The Tissy is really just a bit of fun, and I'm sure will fulfil its intended role admirably.

Marco.