B&K PRO 5 Preamp

WOPL Sniffer said:
That was the first damaged shipment and I ship ALOT of shit. Plus, i use tons of bubble wrap, and foam...... i hate the post office even more than fedex. Twice as expensive, and 4 times as slow. Plus, my whole family filled the ranks of the post office when i was growing up. Talk about postal....
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Marantz 2240 went to TX and made it in 3 days, I don't know about twice as expensive but USPS tends to pays claims quickly in the event of damage unlike FedEx and especially UPS which drag their heels and send a claims adjuster
 
Northwinds said:
Marantz 2240 went to TX and made it in 3 days, I don't know about twice as expensive but USPS tends to pays claims quickly in the event of damage unlike FedEx and especially UPS which drag their heels and send a claims adjuster
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My latest shipping trouble involved a B&K ST 202 + . The weight of the transformer bent the whole bottom of the amp in from I suppose being dropped off a loading dock. Trustworthy fellow that I bought it from. As soon as he found out he refunded me 100% of my money. FedX still has not paid his claim as far as I know. I kept the amp for parts and sent the fellow an agreed upon part of his money back. I understand things happen, that's just real life. What I do not understand is paying for insurance and not receiving any benefit from it when the worse happens. That part is disgraceful. Us vintage audio guys are pretty honest on a whole from what I have seen. I have had overall good results in my dealings with shipping and with audio folk in general. I think there are more good folks out there than bad. Most audio guys have been very helpful to me, especially the ones here at Phoenix.
 
Diana Arrived

The Sumo arrived today. Nice condition. I am very happy with it besides the fact that the "DIRECT" button seems to do well, nothing. I Thought that was supposed to bypass the gain stage for a direct connection from the source to amp thru the volume control. I have tried both sets of outputs and the tuner input so far. I really like the sound. Looks nice with the B&K just as I had hoped.
 

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Maybe it's like the PL-700. The Normal/Direct switch is on the back of the amp though. For Coupling.... it don't do shit there either. There is a write-up on it in the manual.
 
I have looked everywhere for an owners manual. No luck. I have to say now that I have screwed around with it a good bit more that the button does do something. It does nothing to the sound as far as I can tell but it does do something. When I first started using it I had my DAC (the only input I am using right now) plugged into the "TUNER" input. When I pushed the "DIRECT" button nothing happened, no sound at all unless I turned the volume all the way up then very weak signal from both speakers. Now I plugged the DAC into "CD". After plugging it into "CD" pushing "DIRECT" button it sound exactly the same volume without using any other controls. Volume stays exactly the same and I hear no difference in the sound whatsoever. I can also cycle thru all of the inputs with the "DIRECT" button pushed in to its on position and the source music stays on. Same as before, same volume same input source plays no matter what is selected. This does have Balanced outputs ( HA.. I said "balanced" ) perhaps there is something I am missing there ? I am using unbalanced outputs.
 
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Some Yamaha's (and others) had "direct" switches. When engaged, tone and balance controls were bypassed.
 
62vauxhall said:
Some Yamaha's (and others) had "direct" switches. When engaged, tone and balance controls were bypassed.
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This one has no tone controls and I just checked the balance still works with in engaged. Come on the rest of you guys, if we throw enough ideas at the wall one will stick ! Thanks.
 
fitz43 said:
Different model pre, but is the switch function the same?

https://www.stereophile.com/content/sumo-athena-preamplifier
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The Athena has "TAPE" "MONO" "DIRECT" buttons just like the Diana. In fact, I think the Diana is quite similar to the Athena with a separate power supply. Problem is as far as I can tell by reading thru the owners manual it mentions a "BYPASS" switch that as far as I can see does not exist on either the Diana or the Athena. It explains the "BYPASS" function as eliminating the gain of the preamp when used and that allows the signal to pass directly from the input of the preamp thru the volume control and directly out to the amp. As far as I can tell this "DIRECT" switch does no such thing. Crazy stuff.
 
Check this. Reading this advertisement found over at http://www.davidsaudio.com/index.html . The only question now (I suppose) is why there is no difference in sound or level when the "DIRECT" button is pressed...
 

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