Silver 1176

I've never used the black faced ones which people say were the best make so I can't compare them but the silver face is still an awesome piece. I don't know what you want to hear about it but I like it.
 
The original 1176 emerged in 1966 built as a remotely controlled amplifier around the newly invented Field Effect Transistor (FET) and as a successor to the 108 amplifier, the transistorized 1108 mic preamplifier. For minimal distortion, FETs require careful circuit design so that they operate within their narrow linear range. In the case of the 1176, the FET is used as a voltage variable resistor in the bottom leg of a voltage divider. The resistance between the Drain and Source leads of the FET will change in response to voltage applied to the Gate lead. The FET shunts more and more audio signal to ground as compression is increased. This is in sharp contrast to the UA 175/176s variable-Mu design in which the actual voltage gain of an amplifier is changed.
In my opinion it's a priceless Universal Audio 1176 Peak Limiter.
The one I had was made in 1972, serial numbers 7211-3020, with the black face, replaces the input transformer with a differential amplifier. (Op amps lowered manufacturing costs and were very popular solutions for audio manufacturers at the time.)
I don't recall the production dates right now, but the serial numbers 7652 and above changes the front panel to silver.
Wish I still had the old one.
 
badgas said:
The one I had was made in 1972, serial numbers 7211-3020, with the black face, replaces the input transformer with a differential amplifier. (Op amps lowered manufacturing costs and were very popular solutions for audio manufacturers at the time.)
I don't recall the production dates right now, but the serial numbers 7652 and above changes the front panel to silver.
Wish I still had the old one.

The difference between the "silver" and the "black" were the transformers... most of the 'black' ones had them, the silver ones did not.

If you had a 1972 'black face 1176LN' that was tranformerless, it was either a much later manufacturing date [like on the cusp of the silver ones] or an aftermarket modification [which isn't a bad thing... the "Alactronics" mods sound remarkably good... and they're transformerless designs.

Peace.
 
That is, if we're talking input transformers.

All 1176 versions have transformerbalanced outputs, the main difference between older and newer unist is that the old ones were run in single-end class-a whereas newer ones were made with a (theoretically better) class-ab output driver.

Jakob E.
 
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