I've been thinking about selling this for some time now - it's a very good pre-amp made 1993-1996.
It has nothing to do with the old Dynaco...this was made under the auspices of Panor Corporation - the current owners of the name. I must say, they did the old Dynaco name proud with this effort. This is a tube preamp - 6 in all (4 x 6922/6N1P and 2 x 12AX7....only a pair of 6922/6N1P's make up the line stage...the other
4 are the phono stage tubes). It was made in the US...reportedly by John Nunez of MFA fame.
It is a very good, and versatile preamp. It has an IEC (I simply don't know why, but it does respond to those 75" that make up power cables - lord, I wish it weren't so
), a super quiet and worthy phono stage (40 db gain/MM or HIMC only, but -86db noise level below 10mv input), subwoofer outs, mono switch, tape in-outs, lots of inputs (including internal phono), and an EQ/External Processing Loop (no bass / treble controls, however). It does
not have remote - it was not offered on this series.
It has the chrome knob option...and retailed new for $1100.00 list. I bought it for $600.
I have owned it for 5 years...and it has surpassed all the preamps I threw at it in that time: Dynaco PAS-3, Odyssey Tempest Extreme, Hafler 915, IRD Purist LLC among them. Most of these were originally sold in J & R Music - with bad/microphonic tubes - so almost all units were returned. I bought mine from ebay seller 'soundbug1' who purchased the dozens or hundreds Panor/Dyanco was storing in their warehouse for several years. The tubes (now) are 2 x 6N1P (new Svetlana's), 2 x 6N1P cryo'ed (old) Svetlana's, and 2 x 12AX7WB Sovteks. Except for a selector switch oxidation I had a couple times (cured with Caig De-Oxit each time), the unit has been flawless. It was Caig'ed a few months ago and all the jacks have just now been Caig oxidized and layer of Pro-Gold added for good measure.
There is some plast-i-clay added throughout, and some damping on the (hi-quality) WIMA caps - I didn't think these tweeks did a thing for sound quality. You can always remove it - the Mortite 'hats' on the tube tops are removable if you like, but I think every small tube improves with. The PAS-4 does respond to a good conditioner (Monster Cable and BrickWall worked great here)..I think Panor cut corners and didn't add a good RF filter inside.
I only have just purchased a Quicksilver Full Function Preamp that nips it in sound quality...and offers the flexibility of 6 outlets on back to plug my components into (saving me the clutter of one conditioner of the three I use now
). If you are new to tubes, new to vinyl or just looking to hear a good preamp for not much money - I can heartily recommend this one.
Original box, packing materials and Owner's Manual (with good schematics) are included.
Any questions - fire away.
John / TCG
