Discrete Opamps... the future of tone.

[Zigcat]

Yup.

https://orangeamps.com/product/op-amp/

[somnif]

Apparently they're "popular" amongst the autophile cork sniffer crowd. Paying 50$ for the equivalent of a TL072 seems ever so slightly insane to me.

[gordo]

Could we clone it to look like a butterfly?  Geez and I whine when I have to pay TLE or OPA prices...

[Betty Wont]

Apparently i need to start trusting my ears when choosing opamps. I didn't know that 

[somnif]

All that said, I did buy THIS particular discrete op-amp as a christmas gift for a friend a few years back:

[ahiddentableau]

Every time I'm looking at mic pre kits and schematics I wonder how long before pedal builders jump hot and heavy on this particular train.  The pro audio world seems to be completely obsessed with them.

[Max]

The audiophiles should have a look at the hardware used to master music in studios, especially the speakers. Does it really make sense to listen to music with equipment for thousands of $ when it's been produced and mastered with monitors that cost a few hundred bucks?

[reddesert]

Every time somebody touts the virtues of discrete op amps, zombie Bob Widlar arises from his grave and rampages through San Jose until he reaches the old National Semiconductor offices, where he shakes the orange trees until the fruit falls down and he throws it at the windows, shouting "My kingdom for a matched transistor!"

Please, help save the oranges. When stability and reliability are needed, use integrated circuits!

[Aentons]

Great... now that I know about it... I have to have it

[thesmokingman]

I'm over here thinking that redesigning the grey box 250 as a discrete is the greatest prank ever pulled ... you just know someone will spend the money, trace it, and spend the rest of their life mad about it.

[Muadzin]

Fools and their money will always be parted. I'm sure we're all sniffing some kind of cork somewhere. Be it discrete opamps, mojo parts, hand wired, tube amps, analog vs. digital, special diets, the list is endless.

I kinda like reading about these scams. It makes me feel special and above these peons who fall for them. It's an illusion of course, as I said, we all sniff some kinda cork somewhere, but then again all of life is an illusion.

[somnif]

I'm over here thinking that redesigning the grey box 250 as a discrete is the greatest prank ever pulled ... you just know someone will spend the money, trace it, and spend the rest of their life mad about it.

For the record, when my friend assembled his gigantic discrete '741 chip we wired it into my IC big muff to see if it would work. It did. The "IC" was bigger than the pedal itself, but it functioned!

[reddesert]

Don't get me wrong, I love the giant discrete 741 kit. It demonstrates what is going on inside even the humblest op-amp. It would be cool to try building a smaller version of that into a DOD 250. It has 20 transistors, but a PCB layout guru might get it into a 1590B.  But one would have to use through-hole, not SMD - that's cheating.  (I'm also amused about how one community's mojo is another community's anathema, like SMD discrete op-amps vs tube amp purists that dislike PCBs.)

[Muadzin]

Don't get me wrong, I love the giant discrete 741 kit. It demonstrates what is going on inside even the humblest op-amp. It would be cool to try building a smaller version of that into a DOD 250. It has 20 transistors, but a PCB layout guru might get it into a 1590B.  But one would have to use through-hole, not SMD - that's cheating.  (I'm also amused about how one community's mojo is another community's anathema, like SMD discrete op-amps vs tube amp purists that dislike PCBs.)

That is why we are all sniffing cork in some form or another. 

[cooder]

With this there's finally a chance to re kindle the Klon hype on TPG again.... yay!