The biggest and baddest Pre Amplifiers of all time?

How common are tuner-preamps? I've seen preamp + tuner + amp setups and tuner + integrated amp setups pretty frequently but tuner-preamps seem much less common.
 
Sony TAE-88e - dialup adjustable impedance and capacitance for 2 phono channels. All-FET phono stage. True dual-mono construction. Just lovely.

Accuphase C200 - easy to work on and a great phono stage - almost transparent in its sound.

My Sansui X1 has 4 slot-in phono boards - 2 for MM and 2 for MC (with a ton of FETs for each side) - I have yet to fix this section up to hear it.......
 
JoeESP9 said:
The ARC SP-10 I posted earlier is an all tube unit.
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Not saying there aren’t tube preamps in this thread. I mean tube era in the sense of the era when the vacuum tube was still dominant in electronics before solid state almost completely took over. There’s a lot of stuff posted from the 70s on so far but not a ton of the earlier tube or solid state gear.
 
OutlawSun said:
Not saying there aren’t tube preamps in this thread. I mean tube era in the sense of the era when the vacuum tube was still dominant in electronics before solid state almost completely took over. There’s a lot of stuff posted from the 70s on so far but not a ton of the earlier tube or solid state gear.
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I think thats because there weren't many huge OTT pre amps before the 70's, most tube era pre amps i've seen have been small boxes with a few simple knobs on the front.
 
Dazaa said:
I think thats because there weren't many huge OTT pre amps before the 70's, most tube era pre amps i've seen have been small boxes with a few simple knobs on the front.
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Yeah not quite as feature heavy. HH Scott is the most notable I can think of as far as doing a lot of preamps. Honestly if there's one I want to see a picture of it's the HH Scott 4100 which is in the same line as their 4310 broadcast monitor. There's a number of pictures of the monitor but the preamp and amplifier might as well be ghosts.
 
My faves:
1. The Marantz 3300 (the 250 amp sure does help though)
2/3. Pass Aleph II and the Adcom GFP750. Both designed by Nelson Pass. Not exactly "big iron," but the best pre-amps I have ever had the pleasure of listening to.
4. Honorable mention, Sony TA-2000/2000f. Fully restored, they hold their own against just about anything out there (IMHO).

Yellow Room_04.jpg _KW16065_1754.jpgIMG_0359_2.jpg Sony 7065_TA office.jpg
 
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