EAR834 Clone Phono Stage Pre-amps: Chassis Layout Explained. 

Turning the unit sideways magically moves the rca’s to the side, the power switch to the front and triples the visible glow of the tubes. Pure sorcery!

All well-said!

Let’s go!! Happy Saturday peeps. Morning Skunkie. 😊😊

Yeppers! 🤠🤠Makes sense, like you explained in your earlier videos. I do like it that your newer build have the tubes up a bit higher. I have your series saved for future reference.

"Are we listening to this or are we looking at it?" Quote for the day. Thanks for a brilliant video on pre-amp layout issues. Really good stuff here. That EAR clone board I bought so long ago keeps staring at me while I busy myself with other projects. Perhaps this will get me moving. I particularly think your layout of the RCA jack locations is helpful. I was tempted to move those but I think you are right. I recently built a Coronet3 with one of Jim Hagerman's boards and took the risk to move the input RCA jacks to the rear panel. I was prepared to move them back to the front if it made noise but in this case it worked. The amp is dead quiet. However, the board is quite compact and I have room in the case I employed to move the shielded cables away from everything. Also, this design lacks a traditional power transformer, but instead takes DC from a separate power brick and employs a boost converter to get it to tube operating levels. With the larger EAR clone board and a traditional power supply and transformer your layout is just perfect. These signals are so low level it doesn't take much to stir up trouble. You did a nice series on the Little Bear phono pre. In that design the power switch is in the front and the wires run right past some very low level signals. You twisted the cables to good result. I tried that, and wrapped them with some shielding tape, but still notice a slight hum, not one you can hear from the listening position, but not dead quiet. I have thought about putting a switch in back and just running dc to the front switch for the light. That might be too confusing for the user though. Maybe just remove the front switch altogether. Too many projects, too little time.

Well done. Thank you

That's why I like your content! You are honest with your viewers.Good work:)Thanks for your hard work!

As a long time audio hobbyist with electrical eng background who has built & modified several phono preamps, I cannot agree with you more on the importance of the layout. Preamps can be plagued with hum issues and can easily be set into oscillation in the hundreds of kHz which may only appear as a hum but can result in damage to downstream equipment. The bottom line to those not technically knowledgable and equipped with the necessary equipment, as you have stressed repeatedly, is to not deviate from a design that works well and most of all is stable.

I have two questions. Will this pre-amp work with moving coil cartridge? Where can I buy the kit? Thanks - I enjoy your videos

Wondering if the BOM on your website for this is up to date for the new build? I.E. new chassis size/ standoffs/ fuse?

Correct grounding was the finishing touch. I had the ground on the PSU side connected, and when I connected the ground on the other side of the board the noise floor was slightly lowered, which for the life of me I can’t explain🙂. I had already lifted the signal ground with 100R/100nano paralleled, but that had no effect.

Hi and thank you for all the great things shared in this channel, I'm in the process of building one of these 834p kits, I don't know how's it in the other pcbs sold on ali, but I just discovered in mine the grounding point (little triangle) for TT isn't connected to anything, it's isolated on both sides of the PCB so connecting it via wire to the chasis doesn't probably change anything, and if so should it be rewired to the PCB's ground or just left unused?