$560 for a used Budgie??

I too bought a Budgie before he stopped production. I didn't get the Hybrid, but for my system, and for what I was upgrading from it was a good thing. I have had it about 10 months and have had no problems. Curious to see if the used Budgie prices climb further or if people move on to other pre-amps. I bought my first new turntable in 2015 ( VPI Traveler ) and powered speakers ( audioengine A5+ ) along with a low tier pro-ject pre - amp. Will probably upgrade speakers to another pair that are powered, but I don't think I will upgrade the Turntable. I set all that up on a stereo cabinet from Ikea, so my foot print is small. It is as close to my old man's all in one stereo console as I will probably get. He had one of those turntable in top in a hideaway lid, speakers made in the cabinet on each side and a television in the middle. Since it was stereo I assumed it was from the Sixties, since Mono ruled for the most part until the mid to late 50's.

 

Which Ikea piece are you using? I prefer a horizontal layout too, over the vertical tower look.

 

I have a feeling that if used Budgie prices to do rise it will only be for a short period until people move onto something else. I'm not sure if they ever really did rise due to the fact that every time I've seen someone post one that's for sale it's always at or below the retail value (but then again I haven't researched sales outside of what I see posted here so they may be going for more)

 

After I saw this thread I said to myself, "Huh maybe I could sell it for a bit of a profit and suffice with my previous preamp, a Parasound Zphono." So I put the Zphono back in and after five minutes my skin was crawling; it was just awful: no finesse; blurred soundstage; wooly bass, and unreal sounding treble. I guess the Budgie spoiled me. And this is with the stock EH tubes! The only downside is the gain, which is an issue. But my 2M Blue is 5.5mv. If my cart was below that in the 3.5-4.5 range, I would probably look for something else. However, I am going to pop for some high gain Gold Lions which Shannon said would help.

 

I'm trying to find the manual for the Budgie on line but I can't. I had it set for an Ortofon 2M Blue, but now I'm rocking a Bronze with my mmf 7.3, and wondering if I need to change the settings.

 

You can email Shannon, he's pretty responsive though I'm sure he's pretty busy at the moment so it might take him a couple of days to get back with you.

 

This was my concern. I have the 2M Blue and some Dali Zenor 1's so Shannon suggested the Hybrid. I was concerned about having too much gain, and the fact I thought the Hybrid used buffers. Shannon strongly suggested that I needed more gain and that the Hybrid didn't use tube buffers. Glad I listened to him.

 

I have a Budgie foe sell…

 

Shouldn't need to change anything in the preamp — the recommended load and capacitance is the same from Blue to Bronze.

Here's a JPG of the settings I found online, however, if you want to mess around.

 

All Ortofons MM carts are the same…Shannon suggest 57k even though Ortofon suggest 47 I believe. Just try different setting till you hear what you want to hear. Personally I couldn't hear any or little difference when playing with the settings...

 

Should have qualified this by saying it does use JFETs and not opamps.

 

Thanks for the reply. I’m going to pass - I bought a Tube Box and am going to keep enjoying it for a while.

I’d bet it’ll sell quickly wherever you list it.

 

Not that it matters to most, but the standard Budgie was a bit of a hybrid as well, with transistor/diode constant current sources for the tubes to up the power supply rejection ratio, that's one of the reasons why he could get away with such a low power supply voltage from the wall wart and onboard switcher circuit.

 

Yea, it certainly isn't all tube as the Decware ZP3 is. Decware is 3x as much though.

 

That ZP3 is pretty.

 

They're a pretty nice deal too, I know there are quite a few happy users around. Another nice one that goes for about double the Budgie is the VTA PH16, we've talked some about it in other threads.

 

The Budgie is a nice sounding preamp, but ohhhhh that gain issue.

 

The Hybrid's got 46dB which is sufficient for my purposes.

 

Not sure what it was called. It has four doors that swing open. Inside there are one drawer per half. So a left and right side with each side a left and right door and one drawer in each. I measured the display model to make sure it was deep enough to hold records. Which thankfully it was . No door knobs on doors just push in at the top of each door for it to pop open. I will see if they have an item number or that it is still offered. Bought it in Kansas City, but remember it not being on display the next time I went. Yes the horizontal cabinets are cool in my book. Let you know if I find the cabinet on the web page

 

Enough for me thankfully.

 

If anybody is looking for a Budgie, I saw this one on CL for a steal

Budgie Tube Phono Preamp W/Step Up -Manual-Cal Report

 

Gone

 

I just saw it!!

 

Huh, the link was removed by author. Perhaps it is me? Regardless, I can’t afford a Budgie anyway.

 

It was $300