Definitely don't edit out anything you don't have to, really is awesome watching you work and teaches us novices so much.🙂

After owning the Little Bear T11 for six months, the plastic housings for the RCA inputs and outputs turned brittle. One day when I unplugged and reinserted the interconnects the plastic just crumbled. Ended up replacing them with Neutrik ones. Highly recommended for anyone who owns this T11. Skunkie’s mods plus T.Layton’s RIAA mods turn this little preamp into a glorious sounding component.

Appreciate you are showing people how to unsolder. But if I can I try to avoid it by snipping cheap parts out. Saves damaging / heating the board up. Flux is great for unsoldering and resoldering. Another goid tip I picked up was using a safety pin to clear blocked holes, they are stainless and it works nicely. Heat joint, insert pin, let joint cool, withdraw pin, nice clean hole.

Watching a master work with their hands has never lost fascination since, I suspect, prehistoric times using and making tools.

A few years back, I bought a Tavish phono preamp. The V1 tube it came with is a 5751, which has the same pin out as a 12AX7, and it’s very low noise with no hum. The designer / owner of Tavish, Scott Reynolds said he tried many tubes in the V1 spot, and that the JJ 5751’s were the quietest current production tube he could find. This may sound like a total pain, but I’ve found that even though most MM or MI carts say they wanna see loading of a 47K resistor, that’s not always the optimal value in my experience. On my EAR 834p clone, I added external loading plugs going to where the 47K resistors go. One of course needs to use 1% tolerance resistors so the channels are even. I made a bunch of different loading plugs ranging from 22K to 100K. But…if you’ve only the ability to have one set of resistors, 47K is the standard. Yeah, those don’t look like genuine WIMA caps… lol Another awesome vid, Stephe! Thanks very much 👍🎶😊

Madisound in Middleton, Wi. carries a nice supply of higher end crossover parts, drivers, etc. They even have some very nice Cardas silver solder that works great for circuit boards.

You may want to invest is a solder station with vacuum... Love what you do and thanks for sharing your knowledge.

Besides flux add a little leaded solder to whatever you want to desolder sounds counter productive but it does work. It helps the lead free stuff flow and cleans up a corroded one so it gets sucked out better. I use a vac desolder station which is worth every penny but when I use braid I dip it in liquid flux, add a bit of leaded solder to the pad/joint then pull it out with the braid. Rinse repeat with more braid, flux and new solder. I am cleaning up a power supply in my service monitor right now that had the caps explode and the solder just isn't wanting to budge much less clean up by any one method alone and those tricks really help. It's bad too I put the whole board in vinegar and it was fizzing for a while killing all the electrolyte am having to redo pads and conformal coating. Now I got to go replace an RF tube as big as your head.

Thanks Stephe. I happen to own one of these, It will be interesting to do your mods and see if I can detect improvement (old ears, this end)

Cool. I have a Little Bear T10 which preceded the T11 and is really close spec wise. The T10 doesn't have the metal case or a volume pot and the PCB is a bit different as well but, it uses the same switchable 6N2's/12AX7's and a 6Z4 (6X4) rectifier. I was considering an upgrade to the T11 but, it's really not worth it. I did a few component upgrades and what I use instead of the 6N2's/12AX7's are 3 6EU7's. At first I used socket converters but, I eventually just rewired the 6N2 switch side of the sockets so now it's 6EU7/12AX7. I've tried all kinds of tubes in it to try and get mine as quiet as possible including 7025's, 5751's, and even some lower volume 12AY7's which I thought would help a lot but the best results came from the 6EU7's. It's a bit finicky about what tubes you use and in what sockets. Just switching the order around will give you different results. I still get some 60 Hz hum though. I bought an inline hum eliminator and use it to get it dead quiet. However, it does get rid of some low-end... unfortunately. If I listened to vinyl a lot, I would just get something better but, compared to the other solid state phono pres I have, the T10 opens up the sound substantially. Kinda night and day in my case. Cheers! 🥂

Nice mod - waiting for your listening test outcomes :)

750 F/400 C. I just bought the same value soldering iron.

Rectifier '( chinese ) is indeed different .................6X4 is alos better .......octal version is the 6X5 tube..... You can use an inverse RIAA to run a frequency sweep ..... Have a nice day and thanks.

I am kinda lazy to remove the parts this way 😊 I usually put the screw driver underneath the resistors/caps while heating the pins on other side and lowly push it out, then clean the holes after.

Do you do the cap and resister replacement for both the left and right channels ?

Hi, amazing work, i really enjoy your videos. Ive got a question, can i use a 12AT7 for V3 as cathode follower? i get a really good sound, but im wondering if i could have electrical issues... Kind regards

Iv seen another video where a commenter say they added a mc unit to this pre amp. How is this possible? I want to purchase this unit, who can do the upgrade work your doing?

please clearly name both the phono amps in the description.

Which Mundorfs are those? Do you think anything else loke Solen would be the same signal quality?

🙋🫂