I never had the opportunity to listen
to EAR preamp, but I have a phono preamp QC24-P.
This unit is very nice from outside,
very flexible for any MM or MC carts.
But when I had to open the unit to
check if I can find why there is suddenly a strange hum, I found some
very cheap components (especialy the RCA connectors, and impossible to upgrade them) and everything is on an electronic
circuit without any possibilities to fix it. We are far from the
quality of a pair of good old QUAD II !
So I had to send my preamp to QUAD
after-sale service. I'm waiting for one and half year now. They sent
it back to me two times, but two times it was still not working. I
paid allready for their job, but now they want more money to repair
the unit...
So if you want to avoid troubles, don't
buy QUAD !