Preamp Deal of the Century

Smw30yahoocom - The preamp does not come stock with a remote volume control. But it can be ordered. This is a GOOD OPTION. On my first preamp from Mick, he implemented the remote flawlessly!!! The second time around it had a few issues which turned out to be bad boards.

Mick uses the motorized ALPS potentiometers which run smooth and dead quiet.

A local person is working to get my remote control fixed - he had to order a board from Italy to do it. I will report once the work is done.

I saw a lot comments about "Deal of the Century". I am very impressed the advertisment. I don't plan to live a Century and only need a equipment for the next 20 years to enjoy some of the music that I like. I have tried to find a proper pre-amp to work well with my current ARC VT-100 and Aerial 10T Speaker for a few weeks. After some research with no upgrade at later time in mind, I came up four pre-amp:
ARC SP-11 MK2, ARC LS-5 MK2+PH3SE, BAT 75SE+ARC PH3SE, ARC SP-16(the newest) but was depressed the news about ARC is looking someone to take over. Anyone who is working on computer industry will fully understand my major concern. Does anyone have some experience on these pre-amp? Is supratek work better than these pre-amp on my current system? I know many of your guys are expert on this subject and willing to take your advice but I still did not see any of hard evidence about how good supratek is such as the equipment review from stereophile. Bwhite, thanks for bringing up the problems that you had with Mike. At least, I know this is not a perfect world. By thw way, I am in the process of ordering one from Mike. Your comments on my audio environments, will be greatly appreciated.

I'm confused after reading the above posts does this pre come single ended only or can you get it balanced?

Thanks

The preamp comes in single ended ONLY! However Mick will agree to providing XLR outputs (whether it is truly balanced output I do not know - and doubt it). In my experience, Mick does not know which XLR connectors should be used on the OUTPUT side because in my two preamps (and a friends) Mick used the INPUT side connectors as the output...

In my experience ARC preamps are not the be-all end-all of tube equipment in general - (the amps are better than their preamps though). Their preamps are very thin sounding, sterile and can be down right schreechy!

The Supratek shouldn't even be looked at side by side with ARC gear. Yes - it will work well with your ARC amps (or any amp) but... as for preamps, the Supratek has the correct harmonics, tonal balance, and spatial characteristics that a preamp should have (and ARC lacks).

If you like ARC preamps - no-one is going to be able to tell you what you should or should not do because you have already developed your own bias. But given the price of the Supratek, you could very easily give it a try and see fist hand how this single piece of equipment can open new doors and take your system to an entirely new level of performance.

I don't even want to talk about BAT preamps vs. Supratek.