commercial tube preamps

[SY]

Sound has nothing to do with it. One egregiously bad audio writer used to refer to it as "the chase." Fine. That gives the rest of us the opportunity to save a pile of money from someone else's folly.

[bonsai171]

Of course the sound of a stereo is very subjective too. What sounds amazing to one person may be a bad sound to somebody else. The reason for wanting to find out names of commercial preamps is so that i can go and listen to them before buying. Of course there are review sites like audioreview.com, but there is no substitute for actually listening to a preamp in a good quality system, so you can determine if you actually like the sound it produces. Maybe there are some preamps available on audiogon that i would be able to hear at a store??

As far as diy, it would probably have to be a kit in order for me to build it. Soldering and that sort of thing isn't a problem, so if the kit was a fairly reasonable price (maybe under $300) then it might be worth taking a chance on it. But if you don't like its sound, would it be possible to change it's sound by changing a few components to different types? (i.e. change out cheapo radio shack resistors for mills or something like that..) The bottlehead foreplay looks very tempting at $150; the general consensus on audioreview.com is that it is a very good preamp in stock form, but the volume knobs are oversensitive and bass is a bit lacking.. (which they provide two upgrades to fix).. The one thing that is kind of a turnoff about it though is the rca jacks all on top of the unit.. it seems rather ugly that way. Would that be easy to change? (and then fill the holes with rubber grommets or something similar??) Any thoughts on this, or other relatively inexpensive preamp kits (tube of course!). Sy mentioned that a diy preamp for $1000 or so could easily beat a lot of preamps.. this makes sense to me, i studied economics as an undergrad, and of course with the costs involved in production (parts, and labor), transportation, and middlemen, a preamp that costs $150 or so to build could easily be marked up to $750.. That being said, the main issue with diy would be not knowing what the outcome of the kit would be- how it would sound in my system.. one more thing- I'm using a fairly large solid state amp (170W X 2) with a damping factor of over 100, and input impedance of 10kohms. Many tube preamps have a very large amount of gain (20-30 db sometimes!). The preamp would have to be matched to this amp somehow.. tia

Dave

[Positron]

From my experiences over the years; What I hear is that many are trading up to something that sounds better, or can't stand the fault(s) that their component(s) produces any more.

They seem to be trying to find a component that has fewer faults, is closer to the live event.

I am leary of purchasing anything used until or unless I can hear it first.