[SteveFord]

Many years ago I purchased an AVAStar preamp and liked it well enough but wound up selling it (I think to the person I bought it from).
I didn't use it all that much but wanted to see what all the fuss was about.
My conclusion was it was okay but not tremendous.

I recently picked up another one which has some NOS Sylvania tubes in it.
I liked it well enough but wasn't bowled over by it and just used it for background music.
It's okay, it works.

After a few weeks of a lot of usage this thing suddenly woke up.
Parts that seemed a bit shrill and strident lost their edge, the bass output seemingly increased by quite a bit and dynamics, depth of field and soundstage are certainly there with the 1.7s.

I'm not sure what this unit's equivalent would be in the current line up but it's really impressive.
It just needed some time on it (it was sitting unused for a bit) instead of a cursory listening and a quick rush to judgement.

This is an excellent sounding preamp.
If you get a chance to snag one, do it.
Just give it some playing time and it will really open up.

[ArthurDent]

While my equipment rolling experience is limited, I have held on to my Ultra EC Hybrid AVA pre purchased in '08 for precisely that reason. I think it was the precursor of the AVAStar Hybrid.  It hasn't been in system rotation for a while, but have no intention of ever selling it. I have been intending to roll some nicer tubes in, as Frank has upgraded from the then 6N1Ps to 6922s I believe.

Happy Listening Steve,

JD

[SteveFord]

My old Stax Sigmas did the same thing - they sat for a long time and when I put them back into service they were just kind of there, sound comes out of them, I guess they're okay.
After about a week they just popped back to life.
So THAT'S why I like them...

[trebejo]

Hmmm, I'm gonna have to give my Stax another chance, I hadn't thought about the drivers stiffening up from lack of use. HMMM.

As for the Avastar, you think maybe the caps got themselves re-formed? HMMM.

Maybe vintage items, like vintage people, benefits from a little time and TLC to rise to their potential.

[SteveFord]

I'm not going there but yes, give the Stax a week or two and see if they don't come around.
My Sigmas sounded dead for quite a while.

[I.Greyhound Fan]

Hmmm, I'm gonna have to give my Stax another chance, I hadn't thought about the drivers stiffening up from lack of use. HMMM.

As for the Avastar, you think maybe the caps got themselves re-formed? HMMM.

Maybe vintage items, like vintage people, benefits from a little time and TLC to rise to their potential.

Has to be the caps.  Caps do take time to break in.  I replaced all 12 of the output caps in my BAT preamp with original caps.  I thought I ruined the preamp as it sounded like crap for the first 150 hours.  Then I turned it on and it sounded fabulous.  Even the Pass B1 preamp/buffer that I built took about 100 hours for the Clarity and Mundorf caps to break in.

Conrad Johnson uses Teflon Caps in their SE version preamps and they recommend 500 hours of break in for them.