Hi all, not posted much but
Many years ago, well we are talking the late 70s …
I used to frequent a hifi shop in St Annes in Lancashire, England. It was my early foray into hifi stuff, I was just married and rather bereft of funds but … I needed my fix. So I found this rather unusual hifi store, I had accumulated a Crimson hifi pre-amp and power amp feeding a couple of Castle speakers, a Michell deck (not the twee gyrodec) and was trying to improve the sound. So although I owned the Michell and an SME series three arm the cartridge needed a revamp, which turned into a Denon 103D after loans from the place, Badger Sounds as they were known.
I was also so very lucky to be there so often I was able to pick up their hand made speakers they had used as demos because the original cone makers had to change the doping mix due to to supplier issues, honestly the Badger Transmission line speakers were incredible.
But then I was offered the chance to buy a pre amp power supply … it was designed to be a capacitorless power supply, I know sounds daft no one would do it, commercial suicide but they did it.
It could/should never have made it into production due to cost, balancing thousands upon thousands of transistors to produce it… but it apparently it happened. Well as a never commercial product I was given the option to buy it to supply my Crimson pre-amp … virtually zero impedance from 0 to 20000 k … I didn’t understand the math but the sound, well I could get that. The night I took it home and attached it to feed the Crimson pre-amp my wife, who had no interest in hifi, came in and said … what on earth have you done. She was blown away, so was I. Never have I heard anything like it, I would love to still have it but after 50 years the poor thing has shuffled off this mortal coil, well at least the +15V Supply side, and also the Crimson.
I guess I’ll never hear its like again but at least I did.
Sometimes you just have love what you have … sorry for the shaggy dog story … I still love my Naim stuff though 
Anyone else bought completely weird stuff and not regretted it ?
Robbie
I have never owned anything a weird as a capacitorles PSU, but I do fondly remember Badger Sound Systems as my first speakers were the Martin Colloms Mini Monitors home built from a kit by Badger.
I have to disagree with you on the Gyrodec. Mine is now 40 years old and a serious source, anything but twee.
Excellent use of ‘even the wife heard the difference’ well done!
But seriously what is a a capacitorless power supply?
Probably one that has a very high voltage HT circuit, some big wattage resistors to reduce the voltage to audio circuit side of things, and maybe some strategically placed inductors.
Actually, if the OP could post a picture of the internals (if he had taken a picture at the time of getting rid) that would be hugely helpful.
There have been some inductor (choke) regulated power supplies, rather than capacitor based, the one I recall being the one for Musical Fidelity’s P180 power amp
This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.