DRIP Electronics

[MarkusSamper]

I'm building a Drip 670 at the moment. It's a huge project and you need quite some experiance and additional equipment, won't recommend it to beginners

[Steve Honest]

Originally Posted by MarkusSamper

I'm building a Drip 670 at the moment. It's a huge project and you need quite some experiance and additional equipment, won't recommend it to beginners

NIce Piece
very neat, im thinking to bring a few over build them and sell them to chums who dont have time to build but want that sound,
i will proably not have the ratio control, and use a front panal from GMA in aged brass, looks amazing,
nice work bud

steve

[Dean Roddey]

Originally Posted by Karloff70

Unlike you, Dean, unlike you.....lol....I'll keep my eyes open for the first 175.....

And of course in my case I'm selling them so that I can spend the money buying more boards from him for myself, not for profit or even to buy other people's stuff. It's like the Drip Layaway System or something I guess. Will Solder For Gear.

[Karloff70]

Originally Posted by Dean Roddey

And of course in my case I'm selling them so that I can spend the money buying more boards from him for myself, not for profit or even to buy other people's stuff. It's like the Drip Layaway System or something I guess. Will Solder For Gear.

Sounds like an all round win from here, can't smell any bad karma at all. Let us know if you plan to do a Pultec or two.

I don't envy you though.......it will be like 'Dean the surrogate mum' to let go of the beauties after you have 'made sure they work'........

[Dean Roddey]

It's pretty crazy how expensive the Pultecs are. There's something like $1800'ish just in parts for those guys. There's a lot of Sowter iron in them there hills.

[carloff]

Originally Posted by Steve Honest

NIce Piece
very neat, im thinking to bring a few over build them and sell them to chums who dont have time to build but want that sound,
i will proably not have the ratio control, and use a front panal from GMA in aged brass, looks amazing,
nice work bud

steve

I want one Steve, seriously!

[Steve Honest]

chaps,
if you wanna get some 670 nows the time, i have sourced,
Original Fairchild nob sets, yes the very original NOS nobs
i courced a great price on Orirignal from the early 60s GE 6386 valves, tested and in the proper original boxes
andalso i have an arrangement with Drip to get PCb s on this next run i can reserve a quantity for Europe,
next stop is Sowter if a few of use get together i will improve the discount offers for each Fairchild 670 set.
so pm me if you wanna get some of this cool stuff,

Steve

[carloff]

PM sent

[MarkusSamper]

I can offer a group buy for 6386 tubes. Just send me an email or message.
I can order directly from the JJ factory, and they give me a good price (around 70 Euro / piece) for ordering at last 8 tubes. Maybe we can lower the price once again by getting a whole bunch of tubes.

[Johnny Dance]

Hey steve.

Im making one as we speak as well. Done the stuffing of the pcb. And have most of the other parts. Just waiting for the sowters (ordered). Just need to order the tubes and knobs (would love to chat re your post)

Ps you can come have a squizz if you want ( im in old st)

[tomdarude]

still lusting for a pair of 175b...I think those are next....

[jeremyglover]

i'm thinking the same thing tom .. .

[dmsmastering]

I can also recommend Dripelectronis. Bought my last T4B from them. Great service and professional quality.

[Dean Roddey]

I just posted the first REDD47 in the classified section.

[littlesicily]

Looks nice Dean. Did u compare it's sound to any other tube preamps? If so, what are your thoughts?

[Dean Roddey]

The only other tube pre-amp I've used is the UA Solo/610. It's almost not even fair to compare them. The power transformer in this one is almost half the size of the 610 and seemingly twice the weight, the in/out transformers are far larger, and it allows for much larger capacitors as well, though I didn't go crazy and use mega-capacitors like some folks do, which would have added a lot to the cost.

But, anyhoo, the 610 is definitely a less defined sound for sure. It's a 'hairier' sound for lack of a better word, even in its cleaner settings. Not that that's a bad thing per se, just another flavor. This one is is much clearer and sweeter sounding. I only had a chance to play with the bass into the DI a bit, but it sounded nice. Folks say it sounds nice pushed harder, but I'm in an apartment so I can't really drive it that hard. With gain, boost and pad it should be able to handle pretty high volume sources.

Just doing a quick and dirty test by holding a steady 0dBVU on the 47 meter with my voice, it was coming in about -14 to -12dBFS in the digital world at +4 setting.

[Dean Roddey]

Here's a little quick and dirty test I did with the pre-amp. I had to do it pretty quickly, so the playing is a bit sloppy. I was just going for the what it sounds like. This is drums, two guitar parts and bass. The guitars are just mic to pre-amp to converters. The bass is using the pre-amp's DI to the converters. I used a Blackfinger comp pedal on guitars and bass, and an EH Cathedral Reverb pedal.

http://www.charmedquark.com/Web2/TmpAudio/REDDTest2.wma

In the mix I have a tiny bit of EQ. A high pass on the guitars to get rid of a little more low end and a wee bit at 600K to get rid of a little grunge, and on the bass a small cut at the low end of the guitars to clean up some conflicting frequencies a bit and one at 1K to get rid of some string click. On the drums (which were not recorded through this pre-amp) there's a high pass and low shelf and a mid-cut around 800 to clean up some of the roominess. There's a tiny bit of compression on the master bus, just bouncing the needle on the biggest hits. There's no other processing or automation or anything, so it's almost completely as recorded.

The S/N is excellent. This was done with the gain almost all the way up, because it was at apartment levels and using a low gain ribbon mic, and it's very quite. At more realistic SPLs any noise would be microscopic.

[Steve Honest]

HI chaps

I stopped my Drip 670 project, the cost of doing it as well as i wanted to do it didn't make a lot of sense

as a consolation i went out this week and bought a real Fairchild 660
should be here next weds,

Ill let you know if its any good or not!!

steve

[littlesicily]

Originally Posted by Steve Honest

HI chaps

I stopped my Drip 670 project, the cost of doing it as well as i wanted to do it didn't make a lot of sense

as a consolation i went out this week and bought a real Fairchild 660
should be here next weds,

Ill let you know if its any good or not!!

steve

Steve, didn't the Fairchild cost much more than the DRIP???

[littlesicily]

Originally Posted by Dean Roddey

The S/N is excellent. This was done with the gain almost all the way up, because it was at apartment levels and using a low gain ribbon mic, and it's very quite. At more realistic SPLs any noise would be microscopic.

There was a very noticeable buzz. Was that the guitar amp or the pre?

[Steve Honest]

hi mate
It cost about twice as much, but its the real thing, and the chances are in 5 years the drip will be worth about a 3rd or less of what it cost to build , while the Fairchild will be worth at least what i paid for it, or maybe even a little more,

and to be perfectly honest , i have a lot of nice stuff at the studio the idea of a clone didn't really sit right with me,
so i bit the bullet.

nip round and hear it if you fancy

steve

[dbjp]

Originally Posted by Steve Honest

hi mate
It cost about twice as much, but its the real thing, and the chances are in 5 years the drip will be worth about a 3rd or less of what it cost to build , while the Fairchild will be worth at least what i paid for it, or maybe even a little more,

and to be perfectly honest , i have a lot of nice stuff at the studio the idea of a clone didn't really sit right with me,
so i bit the bullet.

nip round and hear it if you fancy

steve

Sounds like you got yourself a smoking deal!
Congrats!

[littlesicily]

Originally Posted by Steve Honest

hi mate
It cost about twice as much, but its the real thing, and the chances are in 5 years the drip will be worth about a 3rd or less of what it cost to build , while the Fairchild will be worth at least what i paid for it, or maybe even a little more,

and to be perfectly honest , i have a lot of nice stuff at the studio the idea of a clone didn't really sit right with me,
so i bit the bullet.

nip round and hear it if you fancy

steve

Congrats, Steve on a beautiful piece of vintage gear.

[Dean Roddey]

Originally Posted by littlesicily

There was a very noticeable buzz. Was that the guitar amp or the pre?

Oh, the guitars definitely. Both the left and right, leaving a louder buzz in the middle when they mixed together. I was using a Strat through an old Vibrochamp, and had the amp cranked up (though going though an attenuator to keep the levels low) so there was a good bit of buzz which I wasn't trying to get rid here. If I were doing something for keeps I'd have used the volume pedal to mute it when not actually playing. You'd have to layer up a thousand tracks to get that much buzz out of the pre-amp. And you also have to keep in mind that in my apartment situation I can't really do proper gain staging and get the kind of signal into the mic that would be desirable (and normal for most folks), so I'll always be driving the pre-amp gain and output a lot harder than I would want to.

[littlesicily]

Dean, how many hours did it take for the build?

[Dean Roddey]

Well, it's hard to say. The thing is, for most people, they aren't looking at the time to do the build. They are looking at all of the time required for a first time build of a given project. Since most folks only do one or two, they will spend more time just researching, ordering parts, figuring out what parts mistakes they made and correcting them, figuring out all of the physical case modifications and assembly required, and which of the possible build options they want to do and what's required, and so on.

And of course, since we aren't doing these commercially, we don't have a room full of replacements for all the parts, including the expensive ones, so we can't go fast in the name of turnover and write off as losses any that we destroy. So we have to go slowly and carefully and get it right.

And there are things like, we don't have a bunch of pre-fab cables. All those cables are hand cut, stripped, tinned, and shrink wrapped, which is time consuming. All the parts are hand bent, soldered, clipped, and checked. And we don't get a perfectly set up case. We have to modify the cases, and the cases are already finished, so we have to be extra careful not to scratch or dent them, unlike in a factory where everything is cut to order, and then it's finished.

So the time required really isn't about the time required if I was some board stuffer working at a factory that made these. If I didn't care and could go as fast as I could, and I had all the parts at hand and all the pre-prepared cables, and a prefectly pre-parsed case, and now that I've built one and know the ropes, I could probably pop one out in one man-day's worth of work.

But in fact this one involved more like two man weeks, for all the reasons above. And it'll be the same for most anyone. Obviously anyone strong in electronics wouldn't need some of the time I need to make sure I was doing the right thing, but overall it's going to be about the same for anyone who just wants to build one for themselves. That's always the thing about DIY in ones and twosies for yourself. It's only after you've built what you need that you could then do it more confidently and more quickly.

[littlesicily]

Originally Posted by Dean Roddey

Well, it's hard to say. The thing is, for most people, they aren't looking at the time to do the build. They are looking at all of the time required for a first time build of a given project. Since most folks only do one or two, they will spend more time just researching, ordering parts, figuring out what parts mistakes they made and correcting them, figuring out all of the physical case modifications and assembly required, and which of the possible build options they want to do and what's required, and so on.

And of course, since we aren't doing these commercially, we don't have a room full of replacements for all the parts, including the expensive ones, so we can't go fast in the name of turnover and write off as losses any that we destroy. So we have to go slowly and carefully and get it right.

And there are things like, we don't have a bunch of pre-fab cables. All those cables are hand cut, stripped, tinned, and shrink wrapped, which is time consuming. All the parts are hand bent, soldered, clipped, and checked. And we don't get a perfectly set up case. We have to modify the cases, and the cases are already finished, so we have to be extra careful not to scratch or dent them, unlike in a factory where everything is cut to order, and then it's finished.

So the time required really isn't about the time required if I was some board stuffer working at a factory that made these. If I didn't care and could go as fast as I could, and I had all the parts at hand and all the pre-prepared cables, and a prefectly pre-parsed case, and now that I've built one and know the ropes, I could probably pop one out in one man-day's worth of work.

But in fact this one involved more like two man weeks, for all the reasons above. And it'll be the same for most anyone. Obviously anyone strong in electronics wouldn't need some of the time I need to make sure I was doing the right thing, but overall it's going to be about the same for anyone who just wants to build one for themselves. That's always the thing about DIY in ones and twosies for yourself. It's only after you've built what you need that you could then do it more confidently and more quickly.

Gotcha, thanks... great answer. I was going to build the DRIP STA-Level with 4 other friend/engineers but bailed at the last minute and sold my parts to one of the other guys... I just didn't have the time once the parts came in. One of the guys told me last night that the hardest part of the process so far (board is 90% populated) was sourcing the parts and now figuring out some of the wiring, ground switches, etc which is not documented very well since that's a new build.
Anyhow, sounds like fun in a geeky way and maybe I'll jump in on another project.

[Steve Honest]

Originally Posted by dbjp

Sounds like you got yourself a smoking deal!
Congrats!

Congrats, Steve on a beautiful piece of vintage gear.


Thank you both , I'm very excited, its 3 days from delivery and i can't wait to try it out
steve

[Dean Roddey]

I did a little test here with nothing connected to the input. All of these were with the fine adjust set to the middle point.

Gain all the way up
Boost on +46 = -60 dBFS
Boost on +40 = -65 dBFS
Boost on +34 = -70 dBFS

Gain at 50%
Boost on +46 = -66 dBFS
Boost on +40 = -72 dBFS
Boost on +34 = -77 dBFS


Like any vintagy design probably, it's not as quiet as a modern, solid state type of device. But we buy these things for the sound not the noise level, for the pleasant inaccuracy.

With the higher output of a condensor you'd be down the lower range of those numbers. With a ribbon towards the higher. If you don't live in a small apartment, your SPL into the mic would move you down the range considerably from where I have to live.

[toolboxmuziq]

Originally Posted by Steve Honest

Congrats, Steve on a beautiful piece of vintage gear.


Thank you both , I'm very excited, its 3 days from delivery and i can't wait to try it out
steve

Hey Steve
What did you do with the drip 670 kit? Have you considered selling it if you still have it.