Noir Preamplifier & HPA PCB Set

Very easy to build and it sounds great! I used an enclosure I had intended for a another project and put a power supply inside. Some components were a little difficult to find, but I managed to track down everything eventually.

Hi

Not having much experience into DIY (only repaired a tube amp by swapping old components), this was very easy to build and setup. Purchased the kit without chassis from the store, chassis from Moduloshop/Hifi2000 in Italy.
I had to slightly grind the hole of the ALPS pot for easy fitting and I have to find a solution to better fix the front LED.
It sounds very good compared to a Little Dot 2++ tube amp, more clarity and "speed". I can hear more in the music than before, so very good for me as a learning experience + interesting results for the sound. It is very subjective mind you.
Have a nice day

Totally fun build. Great guide—in true DIY spirit. I listen to Noir daily during desk duty. Also have 2 Whammy's by comparison. Noir is its own gem. Pick some phones—pick some flavors—I'm an HPA fanatic and love them all. I interviewed several pairs of headphones—Beyer 1990 pro are a great match for Noir—to me—and my ears. Massdrop Focal Elex are awesome too! Oh and switching jack????? Makes a solid preamp too!

PCB quality is top notch. Mark is a bada$$. Get the with chassis version—it's unique.

I purchased the boards and case combo. The store experience was top notch as always and the distribution center is fairly close so it arrived very quickly. The one click Mouser BOM was awesome. The build guide, again awesome! Not my style of building but still easy to follow with good detail. Nice fun build that made for some enjoyable evenings too. Highly recommend just for the fun of building it!
It sounds great to me. Very very quiet, smooth Mid’s and nice highs for what my old ears can hear. I’ll be happy with this for a while. I use a Bottle Head Crack /w Speedball in my main system currently I’ll see how it compares after some good listens.

Very good sound and awesome look. I´m using ACP+ with my orthos and Noir with Sennheiser hd600.

This sounds very good with my MoFo too. It sounds very good and it´s versatile headphone/linestage.

Easy and fun build. Very well documented and the the panel PCBs are seriously ingenious. At least for me, the case work is usually the biggest struggle... PCB is great quality as usual and the price very fair (admittedly I ordered during the last Black Friday sale).

So, how does it sound? With the HD600 the stock Noir sounds better to my ears than my heavily modded BH Crack w/ Speedball (Mullard and Russian tubes, fancy output caps, Alps pot, Triad choke etc.). For some reason the Noir manages to reveal a lot of details, whilst being a very comfortable listen. "Natural" comes to mind. The biggest surprise was however when I tried it as a preamp with my F5. The Noir somehow gets rid of the slight harshness of the F5, while being very detailed at the same time. Same as with the headphones, the combo sounds very natural to me. The base has a lot more texture than my tube preamp. Obviously, it's not an ideal preamp with just 1 input and it has too much gain for my system, but somehow I can't stop listening to it.... In fact, I'm listening to that combo while writing this.

Beginner or experienced DIYer, everyone should give this simple and elegant design a go.