transcendence masterpiece vs. tubes4hifi SP14

Interesting fabrication.
I think the design layout is simple enough that it could be moved into almost anything.

I really would like to see a matching stainless, tube on top design to match the VTA amps.
You could do it, but you would have to mount most of the parts on the bottom side of the board. I did this with an amplifier. Soldered the sockets and most of the resistors on top, everything else underneath. I used the PCB as a template to drill mounting holes and punch tube holes.
 
The rest of the build was fun! Here's a pic I took of the inputs after I finished them. I did the outputs the next day.
Even though Roy doesn't give you step by step verbatim instructions, he does describe the steps pretty well.
I got a bit confused when it came to wiring in the AC power. The drawings, and all the pics he has posted on the Dynaco board kind of conflicted with each other.
Fortunately a few sharp eyes caught a major miswire that might have turned the entire case into a fuse!
I5KaoEn.gif

(When in doubt, Stop! Ask questions)

Other than that, I'd say building this preamp is about 5 times easier than building the whole ST-120.


I finished it up, and went in for the test mode.
One channel tested fine, the other was suffering from way too high of voltage.
After checking and rechecking my joints and placements, we figured it can only be a bad transistor/voltage regulator.
Roy popped a few in the mail, they should be here tomorrow.View attachment 1386929 View attachment 1386930
LOOKING GOOD!!
 
I have built a SP14, used my own chassis, here's a couple of shots from when I was just finishing it. I really like what it does. A very nice pre-amp.
No Money I really like that chassis! The graphics are very well done and lends it a nice professional look. Would you mind walking us through the process of how/where it was sourced?
 
No Money I really like that chassis! The graphics are very well done and lends it a nice professional look. Would you mind walking us through the process of how/where it was sourced?

I sourced the chassis locally, (here in Hong Kong) but easy to find on Aliexpress maybe Amazon or ebay as well. The rest took a village as they say.

Friend of mine did the Sketch Up files for CNC work and I used another friend to do the actual CNC work. Decided that I want black not silver so sent to an anodising shop that CNC friend recommended. Next I found a designer on UpWork to do the graphics. I sent them a drawing with all the Sketch Up files. They sent me back a pdf which I took to a local graphics store and they UV printed the chassis for me.

Was actually much easier than it sounds.
 
I sourced the chassis locally, (here in Hong Kong) but easy to find on Aliexpress maybe Amazon or ebay as well. The rest took a village as they say.

Friend of mine did the Sketch Up files for CNC work and I used another friend to do the actual CNC work. Decided that I want black not silver so sent to an anodising shop that CNC friend recommended. Next I found a designer on UpWork to do the graphics. I sent them a drawing with all the Sketch Up files. They sent me back a pdf which I took to a local graphics store and they UV printed the chassis for me.

Was actually much easier than it sounds.
wow! quite a process. Thanks for the rundown:)
 
Hi, I'm itching to build a tube preamp! No more room in the Bottlehead crack for mods, it's stuffed, and while tube rolling is a fun sport it just doesn't scratch the build itch. I've been obsessing for longer than I'm comfortable admitting to and I've narrowed it down to two possible builds: transcendence masterpiece vs. tubes4hifi SP14. Not surprising they both claim to be dead quiet and capable of delivering sonic nirvana.

My current system:
Thorens td 203 with a Nagaoka mp150 cartridge
Boozhound Labs jfet phono stage (battery powered)
Emotiva BasXpt 150 preamp
Adcom GFA 5500
Klipsch r15m speakers
2 Klipsch r100sw subwoofers
and a rarely used Denon 2900
Botttlehead Crack with Speedball and lots of other mods.
Headphones of choice are Sennheiser HD650's

this year I will be replacing the Adcom with an Aleph J build and the r15m speakers with either Klipsch Fortes or klf20's.

My living room is 13.5'x18.5' with an open 9'x12' dining room attached forming an L.

The reason I've narrowed down to the 2 listed kits is mostly they support dual outputs (I like the two powered subs). I"m a confident builder but not really a circuit designer and no danger of becoming an engineer. I'd like to incorporate the phono stage into the preamp build. I did look at Pete Millet's Low Mu tube preamp as a more scratch build but his own description of how it sounds gave me pause. I'm open to suggestions, tubes only for the preamp please.

I built a Masterpiece a number of years ago, and swapped out a couple of parts here and there (mainly a stepped attenuator and some different capacitors). I think it is a GREAT sounding preamp, definitely the best sounding of all the preamps I've owned. It is a beautiful sounding preamp. The only thing I would say that might not float some peoples boat is that the bass is fast and tight rather than heavy. However, when mated to a fitting amp it is just wonderful.

I recently built a couple of First Watt designs: the Aleph J and the M2. For some reason I am getting a ground loop between the Aleph J and Masterpiece, which doesn't happen with other preamps. Still trying to figure that out. The M2 however, is completely noise free with the Masterpiece. It mates extremely well with it, a very nice combo.

I do have some parts for an SP14 on order, but it will be a while before I can complete it, so I can't give a comparison between the two preamps at this point.
 
I built a Masterpiece a number of years ago, and swapped out a couple of parts here and there (mainly a stepped attenuator and some different capacitors). I think it is a GREAT sounding preamp, definitely the best sounding of all the preamps I've owned. It is a beautiful sounding preamp. The only thing I would say that might not float some peoples boat is that the bass is fast and tight rather than heavy. However, when mated to a fitting amp it is just wonderful.

I recently built a couple of First Watt designs: the Aleph J and the M2. For some reason I am getting a ground loop between the Aleph J and Masterpiece, which doesn't happen with other preamps. Still trying to figure that out. The M2 however, is completely noise free with the Masterpiece. It mates extremely well with it, a very nice combo.

I do have some parts for an SP14 on order, but it will be a while before I can complete it, so I can't give a comparison between the two preamps at this point.
Please do when all finished with the SP14.
 
Please do when all finished with the SP14.

I finished the SP14 a few days ago. I built it with standard Tung Sol tubes, using cheap Solen caps on one output which is driving subs, and Jantzen Silver Z caps driving the main outputs. Fairly inexpensive film caps were used in some other locations. I used the Khozmo 64 step relay based remote control volume / input control.

In the Transcendent Masterpiece, I am using a pair of Jupiter copper in oil output caps, and a pair of Mundorf silver gold oil in another coupling location. These were rather expensive upgrades that did make a moderate improvement, but whether worthy of their cost is a harder question to answer. The volume control is a Gold Point 64 step resistor ladder attenuator, no remote control, Gold Lion tubes.

I like building stereo equipment. For me, it's like adult Legos that I can enjoy for many years after building. Over the past thirty years, I've built five different styles of preamps, three sets of amps, and a few different styles of speakers and subs. I've also bought good commercial over the years, and have some very kind friends with deep pockets who let me borrow stratospheric level gear for extended periods. This is mainly a winter activity for me, as summers are short and spent outside soaking up the sunshine. But winters are long enough to listen to lots and lots of music.

I guess I say all of this because I have to really love the sound of a piece of gear for it to stay in the system over a long period of time. The Transcendent Masterpiece is such a beautiful sounding preamp (once I found the right tubes), that I missed it greatly when I let a friend borrow it for extended periods. To my ears, It's only fault is a somewhat light weight bass which could give certain instruments a lighter weight feel to them. As I use subs, I can alleviate this quality in my own system, but in other systems the lighter weight was apparent in comparison to some other very expensive preamps. Even so, I've generally preferred the Masterpiece to extremely expensive preamps (extreme as in 10 to 25 times the cost of the Masterpiece). It remains detailed, but has beautiful body and an overall luscious sound. It is a preamp that improves the sound of a system while still offering great resolution and without being overtly colored.

Enough about the Masterpiece. As I said, a few nights ago I finished the SP14. It is always an exciting moment when you first fire up a DIY project. Light goes on, no smoke, no funny smells, check. Do the voltages check out? Yes. Hook it up to the system, no obnoxious hums through the speakers. Put on some music. Ugh. The sound is too bright. Cymbals have a bit of a white noise quality to them. Sound stage is flat. No finesse whatsoever.

Am I really disappointed? No. Everything I build or buy new changes over the first week or so, so I let it play when I am off doing other things and check back periodically. The only reason I am writing about the SP14 this soon is that on the third day it started sounding really good. I don't know what it will sound like in a week, but right now it sounds really, really good. I am listening to many different genres of music, and all of them sound lovely. Maybe the preamp is still a little brighter than I am used to, but instruments are solid and palpable but with excellent separation. Voices are particularly lovely. Modern Scandinavian piano jazz sounds achingly beautiful. The soul of the music really comes through. I've been listening for a few hours tonight while doing some work from home, and I am very happy with how the music is reaching out to me.

As far as a comparison to the Masterpiece, i need to listen more. The SP14 seems to be an overall bigger sounding preamp in terms of energy and sound stage size. I will say that this is the first preamp I've heard in a long time that does not make me feel a loss when the Masterpiece is out of the system. I am getting a bit more hum through the SP14 than with other preamps through my 99 dB efficient speakers, but I can only barely hear it from the listening position when everything is silent. As soon as any soft music starts, it gets completely buried. I'll check back in a week or two with a hopefully more meaningful comparison about the actual sound differences between the two units, but at this point I can say that it is a very nice preamp.
 
THANK YOU ALLEN! Clearly you enjoy the building hobby and music. Thanks for such a personal review, although, I'm not sure this is making the decision any easier. I guess the take away is they are both great pre-amps. Good thing I am immersed in an Aleph J amp build so I have some time to think...
 
Thanks for the write up.
The SP14 uses 6SN7s?
Just curious which version and whether you tried others.
I had an SP13 years ago (I think the first, maybe one of the prototypes).
I think basically a 6CG7 version of that.

Please let us know if you think the sound evovles (?) More
 
does anyone know the circuit topology of the SP14? I'm not asking for the schematic (I assume its proprietary) but rather just generally what type of circuit it is.
 
I finished the SP14 a few days ago. I built it with standard Tung Sol tubes, using cheap Solen caps on one output which is driving subs, and Jantzen Silver Z caps driving the main outputs. Fairly inexpensive film caps were used in some other locations. I used the Khozmo 64 step relay based remote control volume / input control.

In the Transcendent Masterpiece, I am using a pair of Jupiter copper in oil output caps, and a pair of Mundorf silver gold oil in another coupling location. These were rather expensive upgrades that did make a moderate improvement, but whether worthy of their cost is a harder question to answer. The volume control is a Gold Point 64 step resistor ladder attenuator, no remote control, Gold Lion tubes.

I like building stereo equipment. For me, it's like adult Legos that I can enjoy for many years after building. Over the past thirty years, I've built five different styles of preamps, three sets of amps, and a few different styles of speakers and subs. I've also bought good commercial over the years, and have some very kind friends with deep pockets who let me borrow stratospheric level gear for extended periods. This is mainly a winter activity for me, as summers are short and spent outside soaking up the sunshine. But winters are long enough to listen to lots and lots of music.

I guess I say all of this because I have to really love the sound of a piece of gear for it to stay in the system over a long period of time. The Transcendent Masterpiece is such a beautiful sounding preamp (once I found the right tubes), that I missed it greatly when I let a friend borrow it for extended periods. To my ears, It's only fault is a somewhat light weight bass which could give certain instruments a lighter weight feel to them. As I use subs, I can alleviate this quality in my own system, but in other systems the lighter weight was apparent in comparison to some other very expensive preamps. Even so, I've generally preferred the Masterpiece to extremely expensive preamps (extreme as in 10 to 25 times the cost of the Masterpiece). It remains detailed, but has beautiful body and an overall luscious sound. It is a preamp that improves the sound of a system while still offering great resolution and without being overtly colored.

Enough about the Masterpiece. As I said, a few nights ago I finished the SP14. It is always an exciting moment when you first fire up a DIY project. Light goes on, no smoke, no funny smells, check. Do the voltages check out? Yes. Hook it up to the system, no obnoxious hums through the speakers. Put on some music. Ugh. The sound is too bright. Cymbals have a bit of a white noise quality to them. Sound stage is flat. No finesse whatsoever.

Am I really disappointed? No. Everything I build or buy new changes over the first week or so, so I let it play when I am off doing other things and check back periodically. The only reason I am writing about the SP14 this soon is that on the third day it started sounding really good. I don't know what it will sound like in a week, but right now it sounds really, really good. I am listening to many different genres of music, and all of them sound lovely. Maybe the preamp is still a little brighter than I am used to, but instruments are solid and palpable but with excellent separation. Voices are particularly lovely. Modern Scandinavian piano jazz sounds achingly beautiful. The soul of the music really comes through. I've been listening for a few hours tonight while doing some work from home, and I am very happy with how the music is reaching out to me.

As far as a comparison to the Masterpiece, i need to listen more. The SP14 seems to be an overall bigger sounding preamp in terms of energy and sound stage size. I will say that this is the first preamp I've heard in a long time that does not make me feel a loss when the Masterpiece is out of the system. I am getting a bit more hum through the SP14 than with other preamps through my 99 dB efficient speakers, but I can only barely hear it from the listening position when everything is silent. As soon as any soft music starts, it gets completely buried. I'll check back in a week or two with a hopefully more meaningful comparison about the actual sound differences between the two units, but at this point I can say that it is a very nice preamp.
Thanks for the write up. The Tung Sol 6sn7's do take a little time to settle in. I had pretty much the same impression at first with my Aikido. After some hours they do open up. I'm pretty happy now that they are burned in. I may try some better tubes in the future, but I'm in no hurry. As for lacking some bass with the 300B preamp it may just be the 300B tubes themselves? When I built my 300B amplifier I read as much as I could concerning the output transformers used in different builds. I settled on 3.5K output transformers. They seem to have a pretty balance sound over all. The bass isn't as strong as some of my other amps but the midrange and sound stage sound very nice.
 
Thanks for the write up. The Tung Sol 6sn7's do take a little time to settle in. I had pretty much the same impression at first with my Aikido. After some hours they do open up. I'm pretty happy now that they are burned in. I may try some better tubes in the future, but I'm in no hurry. As for lacking some bass with the 300B preamp it may just be the 300B tubes themselves? When I built my 300B amplifier I read as much as I could concerning the output transformers used in different builds. I settled on 3.5K output transformers. They seem to have a pretty balance sound over all. The bass isn't as strong as some of my other amps but the midrange and sound stage sound very nice.

Yes, I think you are correct regarding the light weight bass being a function of the 300B tube choice. I put in the tubes that the Masterpiece was designed around (Gold Lion 12AU7 and JJ 300B) and the bass gained quite a bit more weight. However, I had a feeling that I lost some resolution with the JJ tubes.
 
i use a Genalex Gold Lion 12au7 in my Bottlehead Crack its my all around tube. I took the suggestion of a tube rolling post on the Bottlehead forum and picked up an old RCA 6F8G black plates (super cheap on ebay) and an adapter to fit it into the 12au7 socket. It is awesome! I call it the "Drummer Tube." I'm not sure how but it really brings the drums into the front of the mix. I find myself really drawn into the drums when put on the Police or Rush on. Full disclosure I mostly bought it because its a much cooler looking tube and I'm a sucker for all top wired tubes. But turns out it's a great tube.
 
Well, I've had the SP-14 in the system long enough to give an updated comparison.

Thanks for the write up.
The SP14 uses 6SN7s?
Just curious which version and whether you tried others.
I had an SP13 years ago (I think the first, maybe one of the prototypes).
I think basically a 6CG7 version of that.
Please let us know if you think the sound evolves (?) More

Yes, the SP14 uses 6SN7s and a 6X5GT rectifier tube. I've tried the modern day Tung-Sols and the Electro Harmonics for the 6SN7s, I prefer the Tung-Sols over the EH, although I only gave the EH a couple of days before going back to the Tung-Sols. The Tung-Sols started sounding quite good after about 3 days. I went back to the EH for a while but they do not sound nearly as good as the Tung Sols in this circuit. I have some NOS tubes coming from Upscale Audio soon, so it will be interesting to hear them.

Regarding the rectifier tube, I tried both a NOS Sylvania 6X5GT-G and a NOS Tung-Sol 6X5GT. I had read good things about the NOS Tung-Sol, but in this circuit it sounded dull compared to the Sylvania.

Regarding an updated comparison between the SP14 and the Masterpiece, they both sound very, very good. Ultimately I prefer the SP-14 overall. I can get them both to sound great or not so great depending on the tubes used, but to get the best sound out of the Masterpiece, I have to sacrifice low-end weight, most likely based on tube choice (not just compared to the SP-14, but other preamps as well). The SP-14 has a nice solid foundation, and an extra touch of tube-y richness that is very engaging. Please note that I am not using the standard coupling capacitors that come with either design.

Both preamps measure very well, with extremely low distortion for tube designs. The measurements run very similar between the two units, except the SP-14 has a 9dB better stereo cross-talk measurement.

I think most people would be happy with either preamp, so I'll write a bit about the building experience of the two.

The Masterpiece comes with much better directions than the SP-14. The directions for the Masterpiece are excellent, in fact. I was eventually able to get reasonably good directions for the SP-14, but there are a couple of versions of directions floating about that conflict somewhat with each other. I think the designer of the SP-14 could do better at compiling a definitive set of directions for whatever version of the preamp and volume control he is selling.

That being said, the SP-14 is definitely easier to build than the Masterpiece. The Masterpiece is all point to point wiring using terminal lugs, and often many components are soldered to a single terminal. There is not a heck of a lot of space around the small tube sockets, so one must take care that no components or wires are touching things they shouldn't be touching. The SP-14 circuit board makes for an easier build. I did find myself buying a couple of extra components to make the SP-14 build a little easier and cleaner; things like little junction boxes for all of the wires that need to be joined to the IEC terminal. I recall that four wires needed to be soldered to a couple of the IEC terminals, so I bought a couple of five way universal wire junctions which helped a lot. If you want to experiment with different output coupling capacitors, I would also recommend something similar to fast-on wire connectors that can be soldered in to the circuit board where the transformer wires connect, so the wires can be easily removed to lift the circuit board. Otherwise you have to either unsolder the wires, or leave the transformer leads longer and coiled out of the way.

Other thoughts: the volume control and the input switch that ship with the Masterpiece, even if they may not effect the sound quality, are extremely cheap feeling. I would swap these out just for the tactile feel alone. When you build something, why would you want it to feel cheap? That said, a high quality stepped attenuator is not inexpensive.

One advantage of the SP-14 is the ease of integrating a remote controlled volume control. I love the SP-14 optional Khozmo 64 steo relay based controller. It comes with a digital display, a very nice feeling aluminum remote control which does volume, mute, input switching, and dimming of the display board.

I get the feeling that the designer of the SP-14 offers options (like the volume control) without fully implementing them on his own first. As I said, I love the volume control, but there were a couple of issues. First, the ribbon cable between the control knob and the display circuit board was too short to reach the distance where these are installed in the SP-14 chassis. I think the designer would have knows this if he had built the unit with the optional component himself beforehand. I struggled with hum for a number of weeks, because the way I had the volume control relay board grounded was causing a bit of a ground loop. The designer mentioned he hadn't yet figured out the optimal relay board grounding, so I first implemented it in the manner the board offered with a ground connection for each input. After thinking about that for a while, I removed all of those ground connections, because the relay board had a ground connection to the main SP-14 circuit board, and that had its own connection to the ground terminal buss wire. Removing those extra ground points at the inputs lessened the hum to the point where it is inconsequential. This is the kind of advice I feel the designer should be giving the customers, as opposed to the customer experimenting and giving advice back to the designer. The Masterpiece is clearly a fully vetted design as shipped, with clear instructions.

Still, all is well that ends well, and I am extremely happy with the performance I am now getting out of the SP-14.

I've attached a crappy (sorry) picture of both preamps side by side.

SP14_Masterpiece.jpg
 
Thanks for the write up. If the Masterpiece had those toroids mounted inside, I would like the looks of the Masterpiece better. Exposed tubes are a nice touch I think.
 
Alan thank you so much for that thoughtful review of the two preamps! And the picture of them side by side really tells a good story as well. I'm leaning towards the sp14 but I fist need to find a chassis where the tubes are exposed. Frankly I don't love either of the stock chassis'. It's not that they are awful, just the quality doesn't quite match the insides. Don's chassis, however, I do really like. Too bad it's not for sale by itself. Anyway I far down another rabbit hole at present, so plenty of time to think about it.
 
Thanks for the write up! :thumbsup:As far as the exposed transformer on the 300B preamp, you could just buy a toroid trany cover. Probably around $15. The cheaper ones have a square flange stamped at the base with 4 mounting holes. The toroidal trany I'm using in my current build has one with a single bolt in the center, mounting the transformer to the cover and chassis. It makes for a nice clean look. If you look through the custom preamps posted at Tubes4HiFI you will see a chassis with exposed tubes. Maybe Roy could order one for you? I agree he could have better instructions.
20190330_142717.jpg
 
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