This phono pre has piqued my curiosity, but there seems to be so little info on it available...
I have a Ray Sammuels Nighthawk battery operated phono pre which is a pretty darn good performer. It took me some cartridge and cable juggling and a whole lot of tweaking around, but I managed to achieve a very musical synergy with it with one of the amps (a modified Dynaco ST-70) in my system. As good as I can get it to sound with the el34 amp, however, I've been striking out by comparison with the battery operated phono pre and a solid state amplifier in the loop (both Firstwatt F1 & F1J) with all else equal.
The Jasmine is pretty much at the same price point and I'm wondering whether anyone can offer any feedback on it. Someone who has steered me very right in the past with speakers and amplification dubbed it a giant killer and claims it killed a Manley Steelhead in his own rig--yet there is little info on it out there...
The things I really like about the NH are its transparency, dynamics, dead quiet (so long as placed away from noisy electronics) and versatility. What I wouldn't mind improving on are harmonic density and centering the balance a bit which might be tipped northward just a tad.
FWIW I'm using a Well Tempered Reference and Zu 103 cart (after much juggling the low compliance high mass Zu is doing me well in this position--I also have a 103D in a box).
Can anyone offer insight?
