For those who have known me for a while, they'll know that my upstairs system has remained pretty much constant over the past few years.
1.7s replaced 1.6s, a tube tuner replaced a SS one and that's pretty much it.
I pretty much duplicated the upstairs system in the living room and was never happy with the sound - something was always "off".
IIIAs were replaced with 3.6s which were replaced with 3.7s, VTLs replaced various SS amps, tube tuners replaced the SS tuners, the tube CD player was replaced with an outboard DAC and tube buffer, interconnects were replaced with silver braided ones I made up, Kimber 4TC gave way to Kimber 8TC for the speaker cables, a nice vinyl set up was added BUT something was still off.
My preamp was a Sonic Frontiers SFL-2 (same as the upstairs) and I agonized for a full year over replacing it as I really love the SF gear.
One evening, something strange appeared out of the dark
which kind of gave me the creeps.
Okay, it was in the form of an ad here on Audio Circle in the Trading Post section.
After still MORE agonizing, a light appeared over my Well Tempered which I took to be a sign to get off my duff and do something.
Never one to disobey the Gods, I did what I had to do. I sold my SFL-2 to a gentleman in Hong Kong and purchased Markhh2's deHavilland UltraVerve 3.
I'd been interested in this preamp for years as the notion of big tubes equal big sound intrigued me but I had never actually heard one.
Over the years I'd forgotten all about the piece until I spied Mark's ad.
I reread all of the reviews that I could, thought about it some more and here it finally was on my doorstep - sitting in a puddle thanks to my FedEx driver! Good thing Mark triple boxed it, huh?
I hooked it up and not bad but it could be better. The sound was kind of bottom heavy and good but weird.
An email to Kara at deHavilland confirmed that I did need to flip one end of my speaker wires around to invert the phase and Mark included an RCA 6SN7 to replace the wretched Electro Harmonix tube.
Sure enough, the bloated bass disappeared, the soundstage snapped into focus and the details in the mix came closer to the front.
You know all of Ruth's vibraphone playing on Zappa's Apostrophe'? There's a LOT more of it going on than I believe I've heard on anything else. There is also a lot more guitar work going on - there are a lot of tracks mixed onto that album.
It has the basic crispness of my now sold SFL-2 (which is what I loved about the unit along with the looks and build quality) and it's at least the equal in detail retrieval of the latest Audio Research preamps but without that "polite" sound that the ARC gear has.
The soundstage is much wider and deeper than the SFL-2 but it's not quite up to Audio Research standards in that regard - it doesn't miss by much but it's not as good.
It also lists for $3500 less and I prefer the overall sound of the deHavilland unit overall. The sound is both smooth and it doesn't have wimpy or exaggerated dynamics, it's balanced from top to bottom thanks to a tube change - this one's just right.
My dealings with deHavilland have been limited to two emails but the response was fast and Kara answered my stupid questions and gets five stars from me.
Buying this was a real gamble for me but happily it worked out perfectly.
I have found the missing piece to the puzzle.
Without the people here on Audio Circle I would have forgotten about the deHavilland and would still be trying to figure out what was "off" with my big system.
Thanks to everyone who pushed me off the fence!
