Adding valves to a CD player

 can work wonders:

 and it need't cost too much

 if you go Dutch

Wondering if the web really moves its users to buy something on-line costing more than a CD? Apparently, the owners' enthusiasm for an obscure, hot-rodded Marantz CD player has led to over a thousand sales. But who can say 'no' to a tube CD player selling for only £285 at your doorstep?

My increasing wariness of unofficial tweaking and the spectre of CE Nazis force me to approach such stuff with caution. Some readers think that I encourage aftermarket butchery, when in fact I worry even about something as politically righteous as chipping a DVD player; but this one's a safe bet or Marantz wouldn't be selling 'em in bulk to a hot-rodder. Having known that lovable rogue Herman van den Dungen, of Durob Audio in Holland, for over a decade-and-a-half, I'm reasonably confident that he wouldn't waste my time with something bogus.

What he tells me about the Tjoeb '99 (not a great name to apply outside of Flemish turf, even if it is merely the Dutch pronunciation of the word 'tube') is confirmed by correspondence solicited from the public on www.audioreview.com. Now, I wouldn't put it past Herman to be related to every one of the contributors to the Tjoeb debate, but that's being too cynical. Instead Herman sent one for auditioning.

Fellas: warm up your mice and get out your credit cards! Tjoeb '99 is part of his AH! Range, also featuring Decca tonearms for £15, a headphone amp, an m-m/m-c phono stage and the like. The Tjoeb '99 is a modified Marantz CD-38, a classic budget player costing as little as £130 if you shop around. The '38 includes a remote, its heart is the Phillips CDM12.3 drive, its deficient in no features - the remote even controls volume, a nice way of adding the most useful operations to a system which lacks it. Measuring 439x88x264mm (whd) and weighing 4kg, the '38 is simply a hard-to-fault player for those suffering a cash-flow crisis.

In the Tjoeb '99, the standard op-amp is removed and replaced by 'the best available Burr-Brown'. Here it has 'an easier life than the standard op-amp' because it only has to take care of the conversion and part of the filtering; the remaining filtering and the output stage are found on the additional tube-carrying board. The Burr-Brown is not soldered to the board, but placed in a high-quality socket to allow for easy on-site upgrades.

A tube analogue output stage is why you're paying £150 on top of the standard CD-38. Take off the lid and you'll see a dedicated power supply optimized for lowest possible noise, with dual symmetric topology for 'lowest distortion of the single-ended buffer stage'. The output section sports two Philips 6922 military tubes - Herman says he was 'lucky to get 5 thousand of those, which have a fantastic musical influence on the signal. Due to the way these tubes are used, it is expected that only after two or three years these have to be replaced. For a period, we had to supply Sovtek ECC88s, but (they) were not so mild as these oldies'. The stage is based on one half of a feedback-less triode with passive first-order anti-slewing filtering. The output stage uses the other half of the tube as second-order filtering buffer, for impedance matching and 'consequent relative cable driving characteristics'.

Other details include the replacing of the transistor muting circuit with a relay; critical wiring was replaced with high quality Teflon-insulated signal wire; soldering where necessary was done with silver solder; and the output connectors are now gold-plated To keep the price down while exploiting the '99's sheer tweakability, the company created a range of options, some already available and some to follow, including: a digital coaxial output; an internal AH! AC Noise Killer to clean the AC voltage at the beginning of the circuit; an exchange of the very basic standard AC cable; replacement of the standard feet with something better; the addition of damping material at critical points including the lid; full copper shielding; an AH! SuperClock; a Noise-Kill-Kit with pre-cut damping material for the Tjoeb chassis and more.

Straight out of the box, with no options other than some squishy feet, the Tjoeb '99 proved a not-so-instant winner because it needs a good 20 to 40 hours' run-in. But then you're treated to a creamy, fat richness, warmth -call it what you will- that smacks of the CAL Tempest II SE. Plenty of detail still bursts through, so there is no sense of the blanket, which covers the digital nasties having any effect on desired information. While it will never be described as naked sound, the Tjoeb's performance has to be approached in terms of its sheer 'analogueness', probably the only player south of a Musical Fidelity X-RAY with this particular attribute. I listened to it for hours with no fatigue... and a constant flow of surprises.

It's impossible to place a value on this deck because it's so ridiculously inexpensive: there simply are no precedents - short of some second-hand fluke. (I heard of a reader who found a Marantz CD-12 for £900 ... ) Log on to www.hifi-notes.com and find the AH! pages via the English language section; click on the AH! logo and follow the instructions.

Now, in my quest for the Ultimate Cheapskate Audiophile System, I have the Tjoeb '99 and a brace of Tandy LX Pro 5s. The hunt for a skinflint amp continues...

Review by Ken Kessler, taken from Hi-FI News and Record Review Volume 44 No. 11 1999.

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Bijgewerkt op: april 03, 2000