ASL Mini Phono

I'm falling in love with this thing, though I'm not certain what's going on. I just made an armboard for my Ariston RD80 (Linn LP12-like) out of Purpleheart, an exotic purple hardwood. I put the Black Widow tonearm on it, and mounted the Grado Platinum on that. Plugged into my ASL Mini Phono, there is a beautiful resonant quality to the music, like a fine cello, or other lacquered woody instrument. It's beautiful. ASL Mini Phono or Purpleheart armboard? More listening required. The bass has made an appearance, it's still burning in. For this type of resonant magic, a tubed component is definitely necessary: so if that's the type of magic you want and this is your budget, this is it. Great clarity and detail too. Be aware I had NOS Philips tubes matched, measured, fitted when I bought it.

I use Mullard 12AX7 on my mini phono and it improves the bass a little. I use Shure V15 type V cartridge and my Sonic Frontiers SFL-2 preamp volume is at 12 O'clock level. I wonder if there are mods to improve gain on the mini phono.

I have heard that the new Mini Phonos have had their design chaged to increase output. Though my Mini Phono has been found wanting in certain comparative tests, I still love mine, as I find it gets the timing right, and is sufficiently detailed (very for my tastes) and provides excellent imaging information. Though I often turn my preamp up to 2 o'clock (!), with my matched Philips tubes I find there is no noise penalty. If you do find tweaks anywhere for the Mini Phono, let me know. Until then, I continue to happily use mine, as I have not even been tempted so far to even open it up to see what's inside!

I'm late to this forum, but recently bought an ASL Mini Phono. I'm a big fan of tube phono stages and figured this was a bargain for $200. I'm not aware of any other $200 tube phono stage with a decent power supply like this one has. Mainly, I want to see how good this unit can sound with some modest upgrades.

I'm going to replace the cheap Bennic caps with 0.1 uF KY40 for the input and 1.0 uF Dynamicaps for the output. I'm also going to change all the resistors to low noise PRP and swap in Silver Mica and Relcap for the RIAA caps. I'll also upgrade the cheap Wincap electrolytics with some decent Panasonic.

All told, I plan to spend about $75 on parts. If it compares favorably with a Bottlehead Seduction, I'll be very happy.

I'm sketching out the circuit diagram. I'd be happy to share it with anyone along with my modifications which are easy to do. Just shoot me a message.

-Mark

Hi Mark, I've been traveling and hadn't noticed this post. I'd be very interested in your findings on this phono preamp. I just got an ASL AQ 2006DT full-function preamp with phono stage, and it already sounds excellent, with the usual ASL musicality and PRaT which just presses my buttons. Perhaps your tweaks would work on it as well. Keep us posted.