TUBE PreAmplifier - Educate/Guide Me

[mhardy6647]

Nice A77!

(I've got 2 x PR-999 MK II)

Are you using the Decware as a tape head amp?

Nope, I was just testing the A77 (which Charles "Stellavox" King had, at the time the photo was taken, just converted to a "high-speed" half-track machine for me... and not without effort on his part ) with the Zen as an amplifier. Probably hooked to some tiny R/S "Minimus" speakers (and not the [in]famous Minimus 7s, either).
EDIT -- no, actually I (think) I can see that the loudspeakers were a pair of CSW "Seventeens" which I had found on the swap pile at the dear old Harvard (MA) town "transfer station" (≈ "town dump).

BINGO !!

The quip about Julian Hirsch was that he never heard a component he didn't like.

My favorite "Julian Hirsch" bon mot -- which of course he never actually wrote in a review -- will always be

Of all of the amplifiers I have ever tested, this is certainly one of them

I actually always enjoyed reading his reviews and other occasional writings in Stereo Review. Especially with loudspeakers, over time one developed a sense of reading between the lines of his reviews to get some inkling of how he really felt about some components -- especially if it "felt like" he didn't like them.

 

[MSTARK]

I used to have a RAV-4, which is actually even blander than the Camry.




Steve Deckert certainly has always had a very high opinion of himself & his products.
My first modern piece of vacuum tube hardware was his early SE-84B "Zen" amp. It's not bad - and it was (then) very cheap - but it's nothing like the sine qua non that his purple prose promised. It was also drastically less powerful than he (originally) claimed.

DSCN5766 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr
DSC_9988 by Mark Hardy, on Flickr

Truth be told, Deckert/Decware has turned out some good products, but I think it's more of the monkeys & typewriters thing -- and, for the past 20 years or so, his stuff is (in general*) vastly overpriced for what it is.

I'd strongly recommend looking elsewhere (FWIW).

Just my opinions of course -- but rather firmly held ones.

_____________________
* and, of course, all generalizations are false, including this one.

Still have his Signature Zen Monoblocks Amplifiers (15yo) and they works without hiccups. I don’t know if his products are overpriced or not. But I have seen and heard worst for a lot more.
With 30 days in home try and lifetime warranty, it might be a decent value for some.
Also, I don’t have experience with most of the products in his lineup so it would be irresponsible for me to generalize or speculate.

 

[avanti1960]

passes the ear test with honors.

 

[MSTARK]

Schiit Freya+ (good starter and easy resale if it doesn’t work for you).

Supratek Chardonnay - owned this one long ago but still, one of the most amazing preamps for the $$$. Transparent, dynamic and expensive midrange. I think it’s under 2K these days. Lifetime warranty but...... it’s hand build in Australia. And build to order. One of 3 companies I would consider to buy from (for my personal system).

Already mentioned Decware.

Modwright anniversary (around 2K I think) edition might also appeal to you if you want somewhat more “modern“ (sound signature) approach to “tube” preamplifier. It will have a “hint” of that euphoric presentation associated with tubes but not a whole lot.

 

[jendra]

I have the Audio Space Pre-1 as featured in HK hit movie Infernal Affairs . To my ears it did not bring it a huge difference but I like how it looks and the good build quality.

 

[Chris A]

Mine are consistent within my room and system. Last week after taking a particular tube amplifier out of my system to ready for sale I replaced it with a solid state amplifier I have. Instantly the sound stage collapsed from a wall of sound to a small picture window of sound- all else equal except the amplifiers

What was the output impedance of the solid state amplifiers vs. those particular tube amplifiers? What particular brand(s) and model(s) of loudspeaker(s) are you talking about, and what are their input impedance curves?

No magic here, just added reverberation due to much lower damping ratio (i.e., much higher amplifier output impedance relative to the loudspeaker's input impedance). That's the source of the "magic soundstage" that was referred to earlier. THere was a nice video interview with Bob Carver--who identified the source of the "magic" (and you have to use them in smaller rooms with higher efficiency horns/drivers in order to hear the effects of the microphonics of room reverberation about -40 to -50 dB down on the decays of the transients).

________________________________________________________

I need to be schooled on what Tube PreAmp I should consider; something that WILL make a vast improvement to my situation.

Craig:

I'd recommend a transconductance amplifier (i.e., current feedback) for your Jub compression drivers. There are good reasons for doing this. The First Watt F1J and F2J are both transconductance amplifiers--but not too many of those around (according to Mr. Pass). User ziggurat (K-forum) has one of these (F1J) and swears by its performance on the K-402s (as we discussed, I believe).

I also recommend considering headphone amplifiers having high output impedance, like MikeTN (mikebse2a3) currently uses on his Jubs (McIntosh, although they're a bit pricey--more than I'd spend on an amplifier).

SETs have their own issues with higher harmonic distortion--another way of saying that they have a higher modulation distortion (i.e., opaqueness). Better to use the effect (high output impedance, lower input impedance) to block the back EMF from the driver being fed back into the output stage of the amplifier (triodes have a self-feedback characteristic).

Chris