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Have you thought of (heard of?) Dehavilland Mercury? Kara Chaffee makes good products that have been universally praised. And, shockingly, she is very accessible. Has answered every idiotic email of mine.I have the Dehavilland UltraVerve 3, which is a step down from the Mercury, and it really sings with my VTL (which has similar circuitry to Manley).
King,Try a 12AU7 in place of the 12AT7 in your power amplifier. Send Manley an email first. Ask them if it is OK to sub a 12AU7 to reduce the amplifier's gain. This is something that you should know about anyway since you're keeping the amp long term.Definitely ask the preamp manufacturer if there is a simple way to reduce the gain in the preamp. I couldn't find any info about that preamp and I have never heard of a digital volume control in an analog preamp. What does that even mean? I guess you need to find out if your preamp has more gain than typical, or if you just have too much system gain in general. If you do get a new preamp and it has the same amount of gain as the old one, then you are right back where you started.Your power amp has less sensitivity on the balanced inputs, so that is something to consider. A preamp with a transformer balanced output might be a nice upgrade for you.What are your source components?
Any suggestions would be lovely. For budget, lets say keep it under 10K.Thanks for reading!
When I used Snappers I auditioned Shrimp a couple times. I loved everything about it and wanted to buy it, but for the sound... It was always too dull for me, which was strange because it had the same input/driver circuit as the Snappers which were very clear and alive. Since then, Jumbo Shrimp has replaced the Shrimp, and it added another active stage to power the volume control load (or something like that,) but I have never been able to listen to one of those. Someone on the web wrote that it noticeably cleared up the Shrimp sound. White follower makes 50ohm Zo Maybe that's what was slow. The snapper driver tubes didn't need to be that low impedance to drive the outputs. You could email EveAnna to ask if the Jumbo is quicker than Shrimp, but reply may take a while. http://www.manley.com/contact.php#eveannaI heard the 300B preamp with Mahis once at a show, it was dense and warm but detail and speed were still pretty good. I also used to have an early model Manley 300SEPP amp, it also was very alive and fast, when good tubes were used. Cary SLP-05 is very detailed, with rich 6SN7 sound, fully balanced. Audio Research Reference Series are great sounding preamps, Ref3 and later are faster and clearer than Ref1 which is a bit sweet. There is a new AR preamp coming soon, called GS Preamp (G series,) sounded very nice, very detailed at a recent store demo, with even more of that AR sunny disposition that lights up all kinds of music. I stupidly sold my Snappers because the awesome Groove Tubes E34Ls tubes made by JJ went sour, so Manley gave up on them, switched to EH 6CA7s, but they were too boring and smeared for me. Curious what tubes you use in your Neo250s?
