eickmewg
Well-Known Member
I got to hankering to do another construction project, and being a fan of Elekit products, I opted to do a TU-8500 tube preamp. I ordered a kit from Tube Depot using the 15% discount for signing up. A concern was whether a set of English instructions would be included. I found a set online and the box from Tube Depot included a set, and then there was another set in the Elekit box, so I had a total of three sets of English instructions!
As with the TU-8200 SET amp kit I built several years ago, everything was straight forward and well designed. It ended up taking about 9 hours for the project, start to finish. I spent a fair amount of time organizing the parts and checking and sorting all the resistors, capacitors and other sundry parts into muffin tins. One of the hardest points during construction was mounting the power transformer. I was using a pretty old soldering tip on my Weller soldering station which was hard to keep clean and I had no replacements. There were several solder bridges I had to clean up with desoldering braid.
The moment of truth came on first fire. It has been designed with a turn-on delay where the led is supposed to blink for 30 seconds or so, and then turn solid when the relay clicks. I had an "Oh, s*#t" moment when the led did nothing but all the voltages at the test points were spot on and the preamp passed a good signal to the power amp. So it had to be something pretty simple. There were two led's included in the kit, so I swapped it out and then it worked fine on power-up.
It sounds very nice. I have an old Hafler DH-110 and a Grounded Grid tube preamp as well and the TU-8500 is certainly their equal if not superior. It also has very clean lines and fit and finish are great and everything fits together nicely, a characteristic of the Elekit stuff. A lot of time went into doing up the phono circuitry which for me was a little pointless as I haven't play records in 25 years, but you never know.
In summary, an elegant little unit that was fun to build and which sounds great to my old ears. It scratched my construction itch very nicely.
Bill
As with the TU-8200 SET amp kit I built several years ago, everything was straight forward and well designed. It ended up taking about 9 hours for the project, start to finish. I spent a fair amount of time organizing the parts and checking and sorting all the resistors, capacitors and other sundry parts into muffin tins. One of the hardest points during construction was mounting the power transformer. I was using a pretty old soldering tip on my Weller soldering station which was hard to keep clean and I had no replacements. There were several solder bridges I had to clean up with desoldering braid.
The moment of truth came on first fire. It has been designed with a turn-on delay where the led is supposed to blink for 30 seconds or so, and then turn solid when the relay clicks. I had an "Oh, s*#t" moment when the led did nothing but all the voltages at the test points were spot on and the preamp passed a good signal to the power amp. So it had to be something pretty simple. There were two led's included in the kit, so I swapped it out and then it worked fine on power-up.
It sounds very nice. I have an old Hafler DH-110 and a Grounded Grid tube preamp as well and the TU-8500 is certainly their equal if not superior. It also has very clean lines and fit and finish are great and everything fits together nicely, a characteristic of the Elekit stuff. A lot of time went into doing up the phono circuitry which for me was a little pointless as I haven't play records in 25 years, but you never know.
In summary, an elegant little unit that was fun to build and which sounds great to my old ears. It scratched my construction itch very nicely.
Bill
