3
XP-12_om_10.17
Introduction:
At Pass Labs we don’t change our products unless we feel that
the changes are significant improvements over previous versions.
Because of this we see typical product life spans of seven to eight
years.
We are constantly working on and listening to new things and
increasing our knowledge of circuits and components on sound.
Eventually we find some things worth putting into production
because they are significant enough. That time has come with a
new series of preamplifiers.
The new XP-12 starts with a new power supply. It uses an efficient
toroidal design with both an electrostatic and Mu metal shield
along with vacuum impregnating and epoxy fill. This gives us a very
quiet transformer both electrically and mechanically.
The power supply circuitry itself is also lower noise and has
additional filtering, a little more complicated but worth it.
The XP-12 uses the single stage volume control borrowed from the
XS line preamp. This gives us one hundred 1 dB steps with lower
noise and distortion while removing some signal path parts.
The gain circuitry continues to use our favorite transistors from
Toshiba but has a larger higher biased output stage similar to the
XS preamplifier auto bias. This makes longer and multiple cable runs
easier to drive and gives us the advantage of simplifying our single
ended output circuitry while increasing performance.
Overall this makes for a quieter more neutral, musical and versatile
control center for your system.
