{"id":74,"date":"2008-06-09T04:46:12","date_gmt":"2008-06-08T20:46:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/127.0.0.1\/wordpress63\/?p=74"},"modified":"2013-03-29T18:54:56","modified_gmt":"2013-03-29T10:54:56","slug":"my-experience-with-sakuma-darling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/my-experience-with-sakuma-darling\/","title":{"rendered":"My experience with &#8216;Sakuma Darling&#8217;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h2><span>My experience with &#8216;Sakuma Darling&#8217;<\/span><\/h2>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span>I have heard a lot about the Sakuma Darling and<br \/>\nwas eager to try it out. For the uninitiated, Sakuma San is a cool Japanese guy<br \/>\nwhose amp philosophy is without peer. He believes in<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>like drives like. If you like the sound of a<br \/>\n300B, then use a 300B as driver. If you stick a 12AX7 in front, then you are<br \/>\nno longer listening to the sound of a 300B.<\/li>\n<li>iron and lots of iron. Sakuma San believes in<br \/>\ntransformer coupling. Also, for 300B to drive 300B, you first need lots of<br \/>\nvoltage swing. This is where step-up interstage comes in. Unfortunately,<br \/>\ninterstage trans are REALLY expensive.<\/li>\n<li>mono is cool. Yeah, Sakuma San listens only in mono&#8230;<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span><span>I can&#8217;t afford a 300B, lest a 300B driving another<br \/>\n300B. Nor can I afford those Tamuras Sakuma San uses, so the Sakuma Darling will have to do. I<br \/>\nhope it brings light on the Sakuma sound.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/images\/stories\/sakumadarling.gif\" width=\"537\" height=\"300\" border=\"0\" \/><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span>The above circuit is modified from Bob Danielak&#8217;s<br \/>\nSakuma Darling. The cheap interstage transformers make it interesting and<br \/>\naffordable. Since make-or-break depends on the trans, they warrant a closer<br \/>\nlook. Look here for my experiments with the <a href=\"http:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/pt156.html\">AES 10k:90k<br \/>\nPT159 interstage<\/a>. You&#8217;ll understand why there is a 47k on the secondary of<br \/>\nthe PT159.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span>I spent some time testing the Allied 10k:10k<br \/>\ninterstage as well. Unfortunately, it&#8217;s not as great as the AES interstage. In<br \/>\nfact, it SUCKS. With or without DC current flowing through it, it SUCKS.<br \/>\nThere seems to be 2 peaks in the frequency response. A mild 6dB peak at ~30kHz<br \/>\nand a horrendous 12dB peak at ~55kHz. Worse thing is, there&#8217;s nothing much I<br \/>\ncould do about it. Low frequency response isn&#8217;t great either. The spec says down<br \/>\nto 150Hz and you don&#8217;t have to doubt this. By the way, the interstage looks like<br \/>\nit&#8217;s made by Hammond. The box, the build and the labelling looks too similar to<br \/>\nHammond. To improve the bass, the above schematics has a 30H choke in series<br \/>\nwith the primary. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span>Anyway, I built it and&#8230; There&#8217;s really nothing<br \/>\nmuch on the lows. I don&#8217;t expect a lot of bass but it&#8217;s so rolled off that it<br \/>\neven struggles with some lower acoustic guitar notes. It does sound a lot more<br \/>\ntransparent than the conventional Darling. it took out the fun and isn&#8217;t very<br \/>\nfun listening to.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span>A search on Audio Asylum suggests bridging a<br \/>\n0.22uF cap between primary and secondary of the Allied interstage. Said to<br \/>\nimprove the frequency response from DC to light, but hey, this isn&#8217;t transformer<br \/>\ncoupling anymore! Might as well take out the interstage and leave the cap there!<br \/>\nThat&#8217;s what I did. I took out the weak link, the Allied and reverted to<br \/>\ncapacitor coupling.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/images\/stories\/nqsakumadarling.gif\" width=\"537\" height=\"300\" border=\"0\" \/><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span><span>Now we have all the bass back! It&#8217;s still pretty<br \/>\ntransparent but you could definitely change the sound with your choice of<br \/>\ncoupling capacitor. I used Auricap here as it&#8217;s more neutral sounding. Image<br \/>\nsizes are a hell lot more realistic, more lifelike but it still retains its<br \/>\nability to &#8220;boogie&#8221;. Unfortunately, gain is not that great. The 5965-1626 Darling has a gain of about<br \/>\n36x (so direct connection from CD player works just fine) while the above only<br \/>\nmanages &lt;15x. A preamp will be great but the above works just fine on my<br \/>\nHammer Dynamics.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span><span>There you go, the &#8220;Not-Quite-Sakuma<br \/>\nDarling&#8221;! This will have to do until I could afford some REALLY serious<br \/>\ninterstage. <\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[1523,1607,1259,1260],"class_list":["post-74","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-learn-learn-learn","tag-1523","tag-darling","tag-sakuma-darling","tag-sakuma-san","has_thumb"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>My experience with &#039;Sakuma Darling&#039; - diyparadise<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/my-experience-with-sakuma-darling\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"My experience with &#039;Sakuma Darling&#039; - diyparadise\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/my-experience-with-sakuma-darling\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"diyparadise\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2008-06-08T20:46:12+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-03-29T10:54:56+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/06\/nqsakumadarling.gif\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"537\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"300\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/gif\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"yeo\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"yeo\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/my-experience-with-sakuma-darling\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/my-experience-with-sakuma-darling\/\",\"name\":\"My experience with 'Sakuma Darling' - diyparadise\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2008-06-08T20:46:12+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-03-29T10:54:56+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/#\/schema\/person\/5b66b72b0800b325dff353d812e05f5e\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/my-experience-with-sakuma-darling\/#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/my-experience-with-sakuma-darling\/\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/my-experience-with-sakuma-darling\/#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"My experience with &#8216;Sakuma Darling&#8217;\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/diyparadise.com\/w\/\",\"name\":\"diyparadise\",\"description\":\"... where we have more fun! 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