MFA Luminescence MC Reference preamp

Ecclectique- it shouldn't be surprising that the Syrah using 6SN7s in a transformer coupled line stage is less demanding on tube quality. The 6SN7 has less gain than
6SL7/5691 used in the phono section of the Lumi.

The best tubes I found for the Luminescence phone/line sections were the brown base RCA 5691/5692s.

Good luck with your Koetsu

Great technical informations from everyone, thanks to all.

I'm considering purchasing a new preamp that I'm familier with, and the ones that I've heard and liked are: Hovland HP-100 and MFA MC Reference.

Since I'm a big analog guy(4,000 lps and counting...)MC Reference is my first choice due to the great phone/line stage it has(as you all mentioned) and can be modified/repaired easily locally.
But on the other hand Hovland has more of the modern appeal with pretty good phone stage of its own and is quite affortable on this site(around $4K).

Decisions, decisions........

Hi Mike.I would have to concurr with Kana as well.No miniature triode based preamp I have ever heard seems to capture the "soul" of the music quite like a well designed octal tube preamp.I have owned the CAT sig mk2,various versions of Audio Research preamps... from the sp-3a,on up through to the sp-10 mk2,[still in use] the Klimo Merlin as well as the new supratek syrah.ALL of them very highly regarded and while they all make beautiful music.....the Lumi is still "THE reference" in my rig[phono only].Of all the above mentioned preamps-the Klimo Merlin was the closest overall to the Lumi through the phono stage and I want to point out that my observations are based on the phono stage ONLY.Cheers

Hello fellow audio-nuts. While you have most of the facts right, you've got some of them wrong. There was a preamp from MFA called "Luminescence" (I have two. One early pre-production A and a heavily moded B1), with various versions (A, B, C etc). There was a "Venusian", and an "MC Reference", both of which were NOT Luminescences. Lumi was the only one to my knowledge to use octal base tubes, and was dropped only for the reason of unavailability of inexpensive low-noise octal bases for the phono. MC Reference was actually a hybrid (technically speaking) design with heavy solid state regulation. Very rare and expensive in $5k range for a used one. Venusian I've never heard nor seen but I don't believe it used octal bases, I may be wrong here, but it was definitely not called a "Luminescence Venusian". Thanks for the forum, Mark

A question for kana813: do you have any pictures/schematics for Venusian? How was it broken down into three chassis? And BTW, I agree that you have to search hard to find a better phono (or line for that matter) than a Lumi. Recapping with modern colder and more open caps (MIT, InfiniCaps etc.) make a lot of difference too. I tried most everything including Loesch and still stuck with a Lumi. Phono section is a little noisy for MC cartridges but... Thanks, Mark