Homemade Portable Pre-Amps Re-Visited

[guitarlover]

A while back, I started a thread about my attempts at producing a small pre-amp to be used with my mini-disc recorder that had only a line input. After a fair amount of discussion and research, I produced the following pre-amp of which I was a little proud:

http://members.buckeye-express.com/s...p_interior.jpg

http://members.buckeye-express.com/s...frontpanel.jpg

AS LUCK WOULD HAVE IT, I made the msitake of poking around eBay yesterday and look what I found:

http://stores.ebay.com/Visivox-Techn...enameZl2QQtZkm

Pay special attention to the boxes of the Visivox pre-amp. Anybody every used one of these?

Should I be happy that I re-invented the wheel or pissed that I wasted all that time?

Regards, Steve

[junplugged]

re-inventing the wheel is ok, it's re-dicovering fire that is a problem.

[taylorguitarman]

I think that looks great. I'm looking to get one of the preamps from The sound professionals but I'd rather do what you've done. Any chance you'd post the circuit diagram? Or you're researching links?
And how does yours sound? It looks very clean and simple.

[guitarlover]

Originally Posted by taylorguitarman

I think that looks great. I'm looking to get one of the preamps from The sound professionals but I'd rather do what you've done. Any chance you'd post the circuit diagram? Or you're researching links?
And how does yours sound? It looks very clean and simple.

Thanks for the interest. I have to confess though that I bought a kit (circuit board only) and then made mods and packaged it. I changed no parts. Frankly, I have nothing to do serious testing with so I can't compare to known quantities but it works OK. Realize that I'm not doing high quality recording here, I just wanted to be able to record practice sessions and the occasion concert.

The stereo preamp I used is available from a number of sources. I'll look up the links an post them in a day or two.

Regards, Steve

PS Version 2 is quite bit smaller

[taylorguitarman]

I actually just finished my first preamp yesterday based on a simple IC preamp design I found online. I replaced the op amp and made it a stereo pre and it actually worked. It didn't make the signal any cleaner though but I don't have to turn up the recording levels much on my minidisc. I'm going to get some better parts from digikey and see if that makes a difference. I'm thinking of getting one of the new NH900 md recorders to do live recordings of get togethers and practice sessions.