Neubie, you spent a Friday night searching the archives? Hmmm...
Dan Wright has told me over the phone that the EAR 834 is really noisy and that he got rid of his for a Monolithic Sound solid state pre. Then he developed the mod and moved on to his own tube design phono pre. I trust Dan and it is my experience that tubes do suffer from noise and microphony. I'm not against tubes, as I had a Melos SHA-1 pre-amp. But the $249 CIAudio passive pre amp I now own really smoked it! Someone is developing a killer, budget tube linestage and I might get to try it. Maybe I'll buy one!
By the way, it would be nice if you would post the equipment you use to make your evaluations - I can see that you use a Technics 1200 and, and at least you were, using a SS transformer. What else - tell us about your electronics, speakers, and environment, so we can judge for ourselves whether or not you have any the equipment and the experience needed to really make meaningful evaluations of high end products.
Incidentially, I still don't see any recommendations for the inquirer.
I mention my equipment as often as necessary, but given my nomadic lifestyle I'm still in the process of setting up my home office/ audio room. Seems I'm in no hurry. Lak said he would take the pictures and you will be the first to know. The deck is a *modified* 1200, that is. And who is "we"?
If you paid attention you would see that I have a slogan:
"High end is who you are, not what you buy."
(translation: The professional is able to compensate the idiosyncracies of his equipment.)
As for advice, I am very careful as so many opinions are confusing. Going for tubes in a $2K system is not a wise move due to the noise. Dan told me the Decware tube preamp is really god but it would be above budget. If someone prefers tubes in this price range it would be best to place them further downstream.
You did read this:
Newbie, you are a newbie.
Vinyl rules in my system. My belt driven CD transport is a piece of art, but the modded 1200 (aka The Creature) is the one who really brings the emotional involvement. This afternoon I was waiting for the auto shop driver to pick me up and I played a reissue of a Cheo Feliciano album (not José) with some serious love ballads. My Forté is down so I'm using my backup Yamaha A-1 integrated (1980) without my Monolithic phono stage. My left Swans has a blown tweeter. The recording was bad, the pressing was even worse and I was in front of the left speaker. When the driver honked the horn it was like when the alarm clock rings. I was in a trance. I can't say that from CD. I wish...
This should tell you a lot, but it seems you did not pick up anything! Find out what a Yamaha A-1 is. That's my "spare" amp. Evil creature still going strong agter 20+ yrs of use with 100% stock Nichikon caps...
Oh, it's that time of the year--Back to school days!!!
