I received a C4 preamp with tone controls from Roger a couple of weeks ago! This is my first
Impressions.
After I purchased EM7 in late summer of 2007, I had a couple of telephone conversations with Roger as to what I am looking for in my system. At that time I was contemplating on getting his EQ box. What he actually suggested was tone controls. He thought that would help me get what I wanted. He told me that he had a working prototype that he is playing around with for a quite some time and he thought it was ready to be made put into a product. Being an audio nut for quite sometime, my first reaction was “…tone control ?!?!?!?” Roger’s proposition was logical and convincing (and I do own his EM-7, RM-5II and RM-9 and I like his products very much) so, after giving it some thoughts, following discussions with my friend who have been a happy user of Marantz 7 and its tone controls, I decided to order C4 with tone controls.
The preamp has two 6DJ8 tubes, two OA2 regulator tubes, input selector knob (4 inputs), volume knob, by-pass switch for the tone control, and, of course, bass/treble tone control knobs. The tone controls are designed to kick in above or below the “Mid” frequency range. I do not have the information about specificity of freq. points but may be Roger would provide that info on this thread. It is a very beautiful piece that Roger has managed to put everything into same the wood case as EM7 2.5 amp which I currently use. As of this writing, I tried C4/EM7 combination with B&W Matrix 803s (90db) and my SAP Quartettes (95 db). I’ve also tried C4 with my RM 9 as well as with my AN Kit One 300B amp.
First of all, I am pleasantly surprised by how good this little preamp is. It is certainly as good if not better than my RM-5 II
As with Roger’s other electronics, the sound is neutral but on a natural/organic side. In comparison with the passive pre-amp I had been using with EM-7 until now (2 input toggle pot in the box, also from Roger), C4 adds more gain (added gain seems help to take full advantage of amplification capacity of EM7), dynamics, wider sound stage and adds slight bit of warmth to the sound which I liked.
Tone controls are quite amazing. There is only very slight difference in sound between tone control on and by-passed. To me, only thing the tone control does is either emphasize or de-emphasize higher and/or lower frequency ranges. It helps to alleviate some faults of the recording such as anemic bass, bass that are too boomy, too bright, too dull etc. What I particularly like about Roger’s tone controls are that they do not over compensate and they seem to leave mid ranges alone (i.e. sound of violin, vocal etc.) I will post more detailed review in a couple of months or so. Roger seems to have another great product!
BTW I also would like to mention that EM7 2.5 generated surprisingly high level of volume with my B&W 803s (90db/m/w).
