[RSquires]

Hello All,

I'm new to this forum but bpape told me I should check it out. I have a home theater / 2 channel setup with Dynaudio Confidence C2 fronts and confidence center with Krell amplification. I am looking for suggestions on a new preamp (possible tube) to help bring some emotion to the system. Do you guys have any recommendations on a nice sounding tube preamp in the $1500 used range with a home theater bypass? Thanks in advance for the advice and great forum 

Rick

[Pirate]

Check out the Modwright SWL 9.0SE Tube Linestage Preamplifier  Can be had in your price range used on Agon.

Welcome to the Circles!

[miklorsmith]

+1 on the Moddie.  It's hard to go wrong with a Modwright 9.0 SE.  Later units have tube rectification which I would want but then you would probably stretch the budget a bit.  The SS rec'd ones are pretty linear and might not give enough tubey glow for your particular request.

Bigger "octal" tubes such as 6sn7 are generally thought to be more endowed in the tonal department.

[RSquires]

I'll have to check out the Modwright. One question I had, in my Krell manual it has a warning not to use the FPB amps with tube preamps with a DC offset. Is this something that I should be concerned with? It seems like most of the modern tube amps that I look at have 0 DC offset listed.

Thanks again for the advice!

[electricbear]

Hey Rick , welcome on board.

[bpape]

Hey Rick

Glad you found your way over to our little corner of the web.  Great bunch of guys here. 

I'll see you tomorrow.

Bryan

[jedi35]

Welcome Rick,

Wow, what a great looking theater room. Way cool!!

Adrian

[Scott F.]

Welcome aboard!

When it comes to a fine sounding tubed pre, what about one of Bryan's modified Korato's (the KVP-20)?

[RSquires]

Hey Guys,

Thanks for the nice feedback and preamp recommendations! Bryan is coming over today with a tube preamp for me to play with. Should be interesting to see how it sounds. I'm running my system all balanced at the moment and I believe the unit he is bringing over is single ended but nonetheless it should give me a pretty good idea if some tube warmth is what I am missing.

Rick

[Bob in St. Louis]

Hey Rick, welcome aboard Sir!

Any news on the pre?

Bob

[bpape]

Unfortunately, the Korato and his Krell didn't play well together.   I strongly suspect it was simply too much output.  I could barely get the gain to 8:30 on the volume.  Also, the Korato is wideband and the Krell had no coupling caps on the input. 

We did play a bit with his Meridian player both analog out and with the Paradesea via digital out.  Definite difference.  Lots of changes depending on the tube used.  We tried the We396A, the Red Bank 2C51, and I left him a GE 5670 5 Star to play with.  IMO, the Paradesea had a deeper soundstage with less compression but the straight Meridian was a bit 'faster'.

Bryan

[Bob in St. Louis]

Gotcha, thanks for the update Bryan. 

Bob

[RSquires]

Hey Bob,

I'm still playing with the mhdt tube dac which has some nice qualities. As Brian stated, it does some things better than my Meridian 508.24. I would still like to play with some other tube preamps though as I think that will take the system to another level in musicality and soundstaging. Do any of you guys have experience with the Aesthetix Calypso? That is one I see on Audiogon fairly often and has a lot of nice features for the price. I would like to stick with something that has a remote with a theater bypass. Thanks for all the advice thus far.

Rick