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Post by pinkie on Jul 19, 2014 10:49:20 GMT
The thread title is not of course original - HFN used it in a review of the product I have been building a Pip 2 from bin-ends given to me by its designer, Owen Jones, and huge amounts of advice and assistance from him , to enable me to have a spare while I strip my Pip 1, replace its LEDs (although they have been silent as the night for over a year) and rebox it with better board to board connectors and RCA inputs instead of DINs. The power regeneration thread has delayed first power up until a final conversation with Owen this morning, because of nonsense being talked about current flow in secondaries on a transformer and their effect on RCDs. With Owens reassurance, I fitted a 250ma anti-surge in the IEE socket, and powered up, For one whole second - nothing, then the capicitors charged, the relays clicked, and all the leds glowed.  |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2014 10:57:21 GMT
Well done Pinkie!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2014 11:06:00 GMT
Well, who'dathoughtit? We have lift off  |
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Post by pre65 on Jul 19, 2014 11:18:25 GMT
Well done. 
Would it be possible to explain what a Pip 11 is, and a picture would be nice.
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Post by Eduardo Wobblechops on Jul 19, 2014 11:32:47 GMT
Well done Richard, it lives!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 19, 2014 11:34:29 GMT
Well done.
Would it be possible to explain what a Pip 11 is, and a picture would be nice. Just imagine a lump of old skirting board and you have it Sorreeeeee!! |
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Post by pinkie on Jul 19, 2014 11:35:34 GMT
Well done.
Would it be possible to explain what a Pip 11 is, and a picture would be nice. Have a link on me Pink Triangle Pip 2It plays music too - just the passive line stage tested atm - need to build some phono headers. Guess I have to build some MM ones if I am taking it out to Cagey and nodrog. Any special requests or just a regular 47K (anybody need a header with some capacitance)? Phew! |
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Post by pinkie on Jul 19, 2014 11:36:32 GMT
Well done.
Would it be possible to explain what a Pip 11 is, and a picture would be nice. Just imagine a lump of old skirting board and you have it Sorreeeeee!! I'll deal with you at chez nodrog! You nearly had us for 2 nights until Sue found a campsite - that would have wiped the smile off your face  |
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Post by pinkie on Jul 19, 2014 11:38:48 GMT
Phillip Aren't I good to you  |
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Post by Firebottle on Jul 19, 2014 11:50:58 GMT
Well done Pinkie. Does it have an off-board power supply?
Cheers,
Alan
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Post by pinkie on Jul 19, 2014 14:10:15 GMT
Thanks Alan It can. Pip 2 was almost exclusively sold with a battery supply which helped justify the huge but necessary price hike from Pip1 to Pip2 (with dealer margins PT were losing money making Pip1). The blue board on the left of the picture is a charger control board for the battery supply. I have removed it and put it in a drawer in case I decide one day to go battery, but its not really necessary. The 4 big caps you see at the front are supplied by an onboard bridge rectifier, so I could fit the toroidal you see on the right into the space freed up by removing the blue board. A hole cut with a 35mm punch and a metal plate let me fit an IEE where the previous DIN connector for the battery feed was, and some holes drilled in the base plate let me bolt the transformer to that. So its an onboard mains conversion version that I have for the minute. |
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Post by MartinT on Jul 21, 2014 6:03:29 GMT
That would look a lot nicer with the wooden outer sleeve discarded and a nice flash faceplate added. Just saying!
Well done for firing it up. Surely duff batteries shouldn't consign old Pips, can't they be replaced with something modern?
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Post by pinkie on Jul 21, 2014 7:06:36 GMT
That would look a lot nicer with the wooden outer sleeve discarded and a nice flash faceplate added. Just saying! Well done for firing it up. Surely duff batteries shouldn't consign old Pips, can't they be replaced with something modern? Are you being rude about my skirting board? I wouldn't chose it, but in my case of course it matches the turntable it sits next to. Plan is, switch to Pip 2 and then recase Pip1, probably full width, with the boards side by side, and RCA's instead of Din. Recap, and replace LED's whilst doing it. Of course, in the process I'll break the bloody thing and it will have to go back to Owen to get mended again... Then maybe recase Pip 2, although as I say, it matches my TT. If there are duff pips out there with failed battery supplies, the battery supplies can be mended. Or, since they were 98% foo to justify the price hike, and go with fashion (we also had DC on DaCapo, and the Anni ran off batteries) then battery Pip2's can be converted to one box mains versions as I have converted mine. The problem is - its not an easy amp to service, and many old duff Pips have faults which are not the power supply. I renewed my friendship with Owen finally, after a lot of searching, because nobody else could fix it. That included one highly qualified and experienced specialist professional amp repairer, I won't name, who made a real mess of it, cutting tracks and bridging circuit points. The problem is the transconductance design. There is a voltage to measure at the front, and the output, but no voltage anywhere in between . Personally, I think its tragic, but less tragic than it might be now I have 2 working Pips! |
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Post by MartinT on Jul 21, 2014 7:55:27 GMT
Or, since they were 98% foo to justify the price hike, and go with fashion My experience of using battery supplies for my Beresford DAC and Logitech Touch are that they are anything but foo. |
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Post by pinkie on Jul 21, 2014 8:12:25 GMT
That's why I said 98% foo. A battery supply can make a difference. It did make a small difference on Pip2. But, as I explained on the mains dirt testing post, because of the inherent design of the Pip itself, it rejects noise on the power rails very effectively. The way the amplifier works means that noise on the supply rails is mostly dropped across a large virtual impedance, and only a tiny ghost remains on the signal. Remember the "noise" is a voltage swing, but the signal is a current swing. So the noise rejection doesn't stop at the power supply, whether battery or mains. So the battery supply did make a small real difference, but its main purpose was to get an 800% price increase through, and stop losing money. |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2014 8:43:30 GMT
That's interesting about the Pip. I am amazed PT made a loss as Pip I was very expensive in it's day. If you charged more you would have sold even fewer. I would have charged less and done some proper production engineering on the basis that higher sales and efficiency would spread costs over a greater number of units. No wonder those battery supplies were so ridiculously pricey at the time - certainly foo in terms of cost as you describe.
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Post by pinkie on Jul 21, 2014 9:20:14 GMT
Pip - Pip 1 retailed for under £500. Daft price - long story.  |
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Post by Deleted on Jul 21, 2014 9:32:49 GMT
Pip - Pip 1 retailed for under £500. Daft price - long story. That's less than I thought - maybe confused I and II but late 80s early 90's was a fair amount when popular integrateds were around £300 and the high end = highly expensive market was in it's infancy. That skirting board was probably quite expensive to fabricate. |
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Post by pinkie on Jul 21, 2014 9:51:22 GMT
At the time, an audio research SP10 - which probably was my favourite before Pip was several thousand. Pip 2 sort of prices or even double that. I cant remember exactly now
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Post by danielquinn on Jul 21, 2014 10:13:35 GMT
I am at the moment - re building my PT and I have just taken the plinth apart and it is a beautiful bit of wood .
£500 in 1984/6 is about £1400 today , however average wage was on £150 a week . I was still at school  .
Pip 2 in 1988 was £2670 which would make it 6.25k today
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