Aleph 3/30 Owners: What preamp do you use?

The Aleph 3 has a low input impedence, so you want to have a preamp with a low output impedence. Many tube units do not qualify. The Aleph 30 is better in this respect, I believe, though you still want to be careful about matching.

Drubin: please forgive my technical ignorance, I'm here to learn, right? What type of specification should I look at, and what should the values be? I really do not know type of number represents "low output impedence." Thanks!

No clear agreement on these things. Amplifier input impedence on the Alephs is around 11Kohms I think. Rule of thumb is to have this value be greater than or equal to 10 times the output impedence value of the pre-amp, though some people say you want a lot more than 10x. Many SS preamps have output impedences below 100 ohms, but some tube pre-amps are closer to 2K ohms.

A mismatch is not the end of the world: you may lose a little bass and some other things, but it's not always a non-starter. Just be mindful of it.

Hopefully someone smarter and more technical than I will weigh in. If you do a search in the forums for "impedence" or "mismatch," you will find more info.

Drubin is correct about the input impedance issues with Aleph amps.

I borrowed an Aleph 3 from Viggen for a few weeks and loved its sound but the 23K ohm single ended only input impedance resulted in some bass loss and dynamic constriction when mated to my Blue Circle BC21. Gorgeous guitars though!

The Aleph 30 added balanced inputs and raised the input impedance to 47K ohm in hopes of addressing this issue. I believe some of the other Alephs were as low as 10K ohms.

Most of the problems I've heard of with the Alephs had to do with passive preamps and to a lesser degree tube preamps, but solid state preamps should have an easier time mating to the Alephs.

It seems many people try to stay in the 10-100 times range when matching a preamp's output impedance to an amp's input impedance.

Good luck!

I just thought of something. Is there a reason why you're not considering a Rogue or Cary amp? Is it the price of these amps or the thought of having a whole gang of tubes to deal with? If so, I can definitely appreciate that, and that's the reason why I've only used solid state amps with my Blue Circle tube preamp. I've tried the Aleph 3, Blue Circle BC22 and BAT VK200 all with varying success.