
It looked like the Busby Low Noise Box had too much low frequency noise and so I upgraded it. Here is a photo of the inside - I have changed out the 0.8 uF AC coupling cap with a big, white, 20 uF one I found on Rob's desk.
The Busby Box is still working well. The 9V batteries have only run down to 7.8V. The original designer also put a spare AD743 (ultra low current FET amp) and a OP27 (best for ~kOhm source impedances) in there.
Here's the noise after the fix. There's no change in the DC noise, but the AC noise is much lower than before:

I think that the AC coupled noise is higher because we are seeing the current noise of the opamp. In the DC coupled case, the impedance to ground from the input pins of the opamp is very low and so the current noise is irrelevant.
The change I implemented, puts in a corner frequency of fc = 1/2/pi/R/C = 1/2/pi/10e3/20e-6 = 0.8 Hz.
Overall, the box is pretty good. Not great in terms of current noise and so it misses getting an A+. But its easily a solid A-. |