mikerl said:
i dont remember having to take a electronics exam to sign up for this PUBLIC forum. I honestly thought the point of a place like this was to have an avenue for support.. perhaps i was wrong and its just a bunch of old know-it-all's who dont work much anymore so they spend all day flaming people for asking legitimate questions. find a new hobby.
Like you said, it is a public forum, so back at ya. You sure are easily offended, for one so ready to attack and offend. No sense of humor at all. There's absolutely no implication of an electronics exam.
I'm a bit astonished that you might think Jensen might not know how to design something that sounds great with their transformer, that they would dare mess up their marketing by trotting out a substandard design. It really goes hand in hand that they either know what they are doing, or they don't. With one of those two options, you don't bother with their transformer. You said simple and clean, you got the right answer, really. You questioned it. As if someone here wants to spend time wasting your time with a bad suggestion. It just comes off that you want it handed to you, and it better be good (And cheap! And easy!)! And you need extra reassurance, before spending your time, and a few of your dollars, because you are very busy. I don't have a great reaction to that vibe, and it came through in my response. Is there a standard agreement on 'good'? What's that standard after you spend more of your money and time on ez1290's? If you have all the experience you claim with various preamps, you must have some idea about the meanings inherent in the Jensen data sheet. It's certainly not out of line to ask about anyone using one particular preamp design, but to imply at the outset there's a chance it's sonically inferior suggests a basic misunderstanding of the $102 part you want to use, and what it's designed for. As a working recording engineer who builds and modifies audio equipment, I find that riotously funny in the best Monty Python sort of way.
Maybe reading the data sheet is a waste of time. Maybe I'm wasting your time telling you about the legend of the Indigo Ranch Jensen preamps, based on something very very similar to the data sheet? I'm probably wasting mine. Preamp collectors are hoarding those to this day. Maybe I missed the part where you asked if that Jensen sounded any good; it will certainly define the sound of a preamp more than any single other component. Maybe that's where you are wasting your time.
The 990 is not the greatest idea for this transformer, but it'll work. Plenty do it. I'll leave it up to you to research the ins and outs of matching the 990 for 'best' sound.
You can hook it up to a tube if you want. Plenty here do similar. Wait; that'll be expensive. Never mind. So will (4) 990's.
How many ideas do you need? With cheap as a requirement, there aren't really any others.
Good luck with your build, really no one can tell you what you will like. Maybe you'll learn something and come back with a contribution, if only an opinion of the sonics resulting from the path you take.
