Aric Audio's Motherlode II line-stage keep me up all last night


I received for review Aric Kimball’s new flagship line-stage the Motherlode II on Wednesday morning of this week. This beautifully built two piece (the massive power supply has its own chassis) went into one of my systems to burn-in/settle-in until I had a chance to have a lengthy listening session to get my first take on its performance. That turned out to be yesterday starting around six in the early evening. Well, I was so mesmerized by its performance I did not go to bed until four in the morning!

I have had the pleasure to review four different Aric Audio pieces in the past. Aric designs and builds some of the finest tube based amplifiers and line-stages on the market today for amazingly reasonable prices. Besides, he is totally "good people" with the strong suite of offering his customers first rate support of their Aric Audio purchase. He went "full monty" with the Motherlode II regarding parts quality, a short list of some of these are Khozmo volume control, Vishay resistors, special high-end caps, dual torodal power transformers, dual chokes, and a very innovative way to drive the pair of 6SN7 tubes to perform at their ultimate performance level.

Why was I up all night listening to this line-stage? It would have to be one of the most quiet/transparent tube based preamplifiers I have ever had in-house for review. This allowed all the micro-details to be easily heard. The overall speed, dynamics, aliveness it brought to the system were at the level of the finest tube or solid state line-stages regarding delivering the PRAT of the music being played. The Motherlode II created a large layered and realistic sound-stage with 3D imaging and air around each individual player. My favorite 6SN7 tube are NOS TungSol 1940’s Black Glass oval plates. When I put these tubes into the Motherlode II I heard the beautiful timbres and tonality that these tubes have to offer clearly coming through in the production of the music.

If you are looking for a tube based line-stage that will give you reference level performance in the price range right around $5000, take a look at Aric Audio’s website for all the details regarding the innovative design and the specific parts that are used in this piece. This linestage is a "killer" performer. This will be a fun and a total pleasure to continue to evaluate the Motherlode II and in the near future write my review on it.




teajay
@jake18aa - congrats, you hit the Motherlode :)! Seriously though, congrats on your Aric preamp, and I couldn’t agree with you more! I have an upgraded, kicked up Aric Special 6SN7 preamp that gets pretty close to the Motherlode II, and it’s an end-game preamp for me and my ears. Spectacular! 

Howdy folks, I wanted to again say Thanks! - and also, wanted to post that I have the parts en route to relaunch the Special 6SN7 preamp with all of the upgrades that Mark1 has incorporated into his. It will be added to the website once time frees up to complete the build- probably 3 weeks or so. The price point will be a bit higher, but still well below the Motherlode II. On that note, I will be relaunching the Transcend 6SN7 linestage just after that, which will punch well above it's weight, and fill in the gap between the Unlimited II and Special 6SN7 for any who may have interest. Best wishes, Aric
Just ordered a Motherload 2 from Aric.  Obviously can’t comment on sound quality yet, but he has been great to deal with.  Extremely responsive to my many emails, both before and after purchase!  Customer service as good as I’ve ever seen. Ted
As someone who has worked with Aric before and owns the ORIGINAL Motherlode, I still cannot be more pleased with my work of audio art! As all other components in my system have come and gone, The Lode sits in the same place as it did when I placed it there nearly four years ago. Aric is a rare asset in our esoteric community!

I hope that Jake and Ted enjoy their new gear as much as I continue to do so!