Preamp Deal of the Century

Maril and Opuss,strange problem your having. I do hope you get to the bottom of it..... I have owned a pair of Quad 63s for going on twenty five years.I have had various electronics ,solid state and tube driving them over the years.It took awhile for me to discover these speakers should be in a room where they can breath along with ridid stands to elevate them off the floor.They have a spooky midrange magic that compared to speakers today,many would fall flat on their face. They are ruthless in reveiling anomalies in the midrange.Be it up stream electronics or in a recording. All these years that I have enjoyed them, I have never heard them sing like they do now....never... Partly due to a new room but mostly to a change in wire.Nordost mono filiment silver coated copper in my tone arm and to the phono section of my Chenin...The transformation was significate....The wire Im slowing replacing is Cardas Golden Reference to the amps and speakers. Over the past three years I have tried several differant complete runs of brands of wire. None of them even came close to what this mono filiment wire does. Though it works extremely well in my system ,it may not in yours.However look into it. It could very well be a wire issue. Hopefully it will do the trick.......Ecclectique,Im always interested in what you have to say.

I get the feeling this is going to drive the posts to over the 4000 mark - a record. It is hard to know what to do at this point. As a neurotic audiphile, this "glare" is certainly driving a pause in the unqualified praise for these units. So I do hope those who hear glare when many others apparently do not, realize the monkey wrench they are throwing into the mix, especially with a small, cottage industry manufacturer. On the surface their comments seem to be honest, which of course is what makes it worrisome, on the other hand, there appears to be many, many satisfied customers. What is an outsider to do? It shows the power of doubt and hesitation we as hobbiest are prone to. It is almost enough to throw up your hands and just get a McIntosh, which may or may not be the very best, but at least you know it is more than decent and will last a long time.

Well,if between the talents of Ecclectique and Mick this problem can't be resolved,I don't know how it would be. It's a shame we can't get more ears physically to these two systems,very difficult to solve tough problems via the web. I hope eventually we can get this solved to everyones liking.

When you take into account the hundreds of positive comments from this thread and the many happy customers that Mick has had over the past few years, I don't think that Mick has to worry about his business going down the drain, or even being affected by a couple of people that hear a glare in their system and attribute it to Supratek preamps. I am sure that the satisfaction rate for Supratek is over 99%. I believe these are the best preamps in the world per dollar spent. I don't believe the 2 guys that hear a glare in their system are saying this to bad mouth Supratek or to sabotage Mick's business. Many people have offered ideas to try to get rid of this glare. That is what I love about this thread. People try to help each other out if a problem arises. Bottom line is if you cannot solve the problem (and I hope you can), sell your Supratek and buy another preamp. If I were considering buying a Supratek for the first time and I had read even a third of this thread, I certainly would not let a couple of non glowing comments keep me from purchasing. I would advise any potential buyers to not be turned off by a problem that 2 people are having when hundreds of people all over the world sing nothing but praise for the sound of the most musical preamps in the world, Supratek preamps.

Stiltskin, Zachzdb and Slowhand...Just reading your comments gives me a much better supportive feeling about hopefully finding some solution to the matter facing both maril555 and me. Very importantly, Slowhand is absolutely correct when he asserts (speaking for myself) that I have no intention whatsoever of badmouthing Supratek or hurting Mick's business. I will say again, as I have several times earlier, that I believe the Cortese to be a superb product. I would LOVE to be able to more fully enjoy it in the same way most others have and do, and I am still confident I can. I am still in the process of trying different things, and it's probably wisest for me to kind of lay low for awhile until I can hopefully come up with the proper medicine, so to speak. I just want to relate that I found a few interesting comments on Audio Asylum from Todd Krieger (type in Supratek Cortese in Search of Amp/Preamp Asylum and look at entry #18). His choice of words---"shout" and "bombastic"---could possibly be his way of describing what Maril555 and I have been hearing. From my listening perspective, the upper midrange in particular seems to have that somewhat overly emphatic characteristic which, with certain instruments, e.g., horns and massed strings, I hear as glare, and I haven't been comfortable with it. I heard it again last night, while trying both Mullard and Amperex rectifiers, Tungsol regulators, Siemens gold pin 7308s, KenRad 6SN7s, etc. all working together. I assume that some of you would agree with me that these are pretty decent tubes. I might try Todd's recommendations with the KT-66s, etc. I read in a some previous Audiogon threads where a few Supratek owners attained results similar to Todd's using the same approach he did. In any event, I'm also preparing to experiment with several other cables (interconnect and speaker). Well, enough for now. Got to get to bed. Sincere thanks again to you fellows.