I built this preamp from a kit from Bottlehead Industries, which is easily the coolest company around. They prefer to use good design and sensible engineering compromises to achieve good sound instead of absurd complexity and expensive components as is currently fashionable. With stepped attenuators and constant current source upgrades, the kit was around $200. I used differed knobs, mounted everything on the top panel including an IEC socket and panel mount fuse holder, and used a toggle switch for 2 inputs instead of a rotary selector for 3. The tubes shown are some I scrounged from a local salvage yard, but I have some used RCA cleartops I want to try. The base is Polyeurothaned MDF.

Something really neat happens when you hook this baby up to the Sansui G-8000. Not only does the imaging and presence improve, but the bass and power handling get much better as well. I suspect it has something to do with the Foreplay's ability to drive damn near any load presented at the outputs.

I hope to build a pirate (non-kit) pair of the Bottlehead Straight-8 speakers (8 5-inch drivers per side, 96dB efficiency) and eventually a pair of thier $400 2A3 monoblocks (on order). In the meantime I am procrastinating on a Nelson Pass Zen amp. I may also do the so-called "snubber" mod to the foreplay to see if it helps a bit of hiss I am getting.

Update [2000-12-11]:

Last night I performed the "snubber" modification to the foreplay to see if it would help some of the hiss I am getting. It appears on firt listen to have made alost no difference. It took about 20 minutes, cost about $2 in Radio Shack parts, and only added parts to the filament power supply, not the signal path. Basically, even if it didn't help, it didn't hurt anything either. I used Olen's DIY Audio Website for reference. He has a reprint of the Valve magazine article that originally described this modification.