Need some suggestions for a Preamp

Funny, my experience has been the total opposite.

I owned more than $10,000 worth of modern high quality vacuum tube electronics. They didn't hold a candle to my vintage Marantz gear.

Hijacking the thread was not nice. We were not talking about DIY gear here. :thumbsdn:
 
crooner said:
Funny, my experience has been the total opposite.

I owned more than $10,000 worth of modern high quality vacuum tube electronics. They didn't hold a candle to my vintage Marantz gear.

Hijacking the thread was not nice. We were not talking about DIY gear here. :thumbsdn:
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Hey, it's all good....

Anyway, I rolled in the Amperex (Mullards) and the Telefunken and gave it a listen...man, they really smoothed things out and what little harshness there was went away. I lost a bit of bass, but the bass is better now as it's even faster and tighter...it still reaches as low as required without strain.

What I really like is the control during heavy and difficult vocal passages as that is where the Maggie 1.6's can be difficult on amps....

I haven't tried Triode yet, but I will tonight (I promise) and see if they can nail the Maggies that way!

Crooner I agree, there is some magic going on with the real good vintage stuff. While mine is a reissue of the real deal, it was done faithfully and using as much as humanly possible the same vendors and parts. I would be hard pressed to tell the difference between the real and RI 9's when they are properly tubed with real xf2 date coded Mullards and the right 6cg7's.

I got real lucky to find the McIntosh MX-110 as it complements the rest of my set-up nicely.
 
Well I tried going Triode with the Maggies and not enough zip to get it done, but damn close...of course the test material was Diana Krall Live In Paris which is a good test. Where it fails is in the vocals as they tend to go first...It was (near) perfect in Ultra however!:thmbsp:

There is no doubt that rolling in better 12AX7/ECC83's cleaned things up and I did bag a pair of Siemens 6U8's that are NOS from the early 60's and they will be the next to be rolled in.

Sorry for my ramblings, but this was a big leap for me. Hindsight is tell me that I did good and that I have a system that will serve me proudly for many years to come.
 
Jim:
Your experience in triode mode is not surprising. This was originally incorporated in the Marantz units as a means to prevent speaker damage back in the day. Many contemporary speaker systems were rated for as little as 20 watts continuous!

The "magical" properties often attributed to triode mode (not to be confused with triode amps or triode single ended) are greatly exaggerated. And even if you gained some "sweetness", the loss of power is not worth it, IMHO.

Ultralinear is really the way these amps were meant to be used.
 
crooner said:
Jim:
Your experience in triode mode is not surprising. This was originally incorporated in the Marantz units as a means to prevent speaker damage back in the day. Many contemporary speaker systems were rated for as little as 20 watts continuous!

The "magical" properties often attributed to triode mode (not to be confused with triode amps or triode single ended) are greatly exaggerated. And even if you gained some "sweetness", the loss of power is not worth it, IMHO.

Ultralinear is really the way these amps were meant to be used.
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I agree as for the few minutes I was running Triode, I didn't hear much of a difference, except for it didn't have enough in the tank for the demanding loads that require the headroom.

In Ultra I have all the power I need and them some!
 
Big Jim 007 said:
Crooner I agree, there is some magic going on with the real good vintage stuff.
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Oh I agree with that. I eventually sold my MC-225 (got it with the MX-110), but it's definitely got magic, especially on efficient speakers. I'd rather listen to it than 90% of the tube amps sold these days.

And there are a lot of sleepers out there, including some old Japanese single-ended units with 6BQ5, 6BM8, 6AQ5, etc. On my plate in the next few months is getting a bunch of vintage stuff up to speed (Scott, Fisher, Lafayette, Heathkit...) -- and I didn't acquire all this stuff without having some passion for it!

But some of the linear low- or no-feedback stuff you can get now with true triodes really is better to my ears: all the magic (really more, with cleaner circutis/ better imaging) with more balanced response.

BTW, I'm sure that what came off as threadjacking was well-intentioned.
 
tubino said:
Oh I agree with that. I eventually sold my MC-225 (got it with the MX-110), but it's definitely got magic, especially on efficient speakers. I'd rather listen to it than 90% of the tube amps sold these days.

And there are a lot of sleepers out there, including some old Japanese single-ended units with 6BQ5, 6BM8, 6AQ5, etc. On my plate in the next few months is getting a bunch of vintage stuff up to speed (Scott, Fisher, Lafayette, Heathkit...) -- and I didn't acquire all this stuff without having some passion for it!

But some of the linear low- or no-feedback stuff you can get now with true triodes really is better to my ears: all the magic (really more, with cleaner circutis/ better imaging) with more balanced response.

BTW, I'm sure that what came off as threadjacking was well-intentioned.
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Too each their own...one man's poison, etc.

My friend who sold me the Marantz 9's can afford whatever he wants, literally, and he is running with a pair of 9's over his SET's...his speakers are Avantgarde Trio's and can run them on a flashlight battery....he has some 300B's and such that don't get much time.
 
I was answering this post:
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I'm going to plunk down some serious cash for a pair of Marantz 9 reissues and need a tube preamp in the 2k range....what would be a good mate until a 7c comes my way?

My mains are a pair of Magnepan 1.6's with a pair of B&W's doing the work under 50hz. My CDP is a AH! Tjoeb 99 that has been upgraded to E288CC's (darn smooth sounding).

I prefer 12AX7's as I have a nice collection of NOS and lighty used that I could roll...

Thanks,
Jim

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I don't see any exclusion of low-production gear( even as low as one ).

As to price tags, numbers are just a numbers. Careful work can make it nearly meaningless in the large scheme of things. However, I did get a rude shock when I totalled up the parts bill for the 4E27 amps I've been listinening to of late...:) Good thing it was a long term shopping spree.


cheers,
Douglas
 
Just a final comment (I hope). Money wasn't an issue, what was that being that no viable Marantz 7C's were lying around to be mated with the Marantz 9's, I was willing to get a decent Preamp as an interlude until one did show up. The irony is that I'm totally blown away so far by the McIntosh MX-110.

I just wonder what a PIP Tube Preamp/Tuner with a overbuilt power supply and build quality throughout would cost if new today?
 
Big Jim 007 said:
I just wonder what a PIP Tube Preamp/Tuner with a overbuilt power supply and build quality throughout would cost if new today?
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Fun to think about! The tube tuner part I have NO IDEA, because I don't think anyone has produced one for many decades.

The tube preamp part, though, is not SO mysterious. Overbuilt power supply and build quality could be said of many tube preamps out there, but they will cost you $2k to $5k and up, even without a phono stage, IMO. (I'm thinking of deHavilland, but there are others.) Now some of THOSE will have tube rectifiers, or very high quality diodes (hexfreds, schottkys), and some will have better coupling caps and big ol' triodes that don't need much feedback (if any) to be linear, discrete resistor vol controls, much shorter signal path. It will cost you more to go that route than an MX-110 (and I just passed up another MX-110 a few months ago... maybe even the same one you wound up with!), but you really do get something some people prefer, at least as a linestage.

My wife would be just as happy if I had kept the MX-110 and MC-225, and they do look cool.
 
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