Prima Luna Premium Pre

Hi Pkelly

I have no doubt your ET3SE sounds great. Your question above asked about the quality of the parts used. Valid and important to ask. The PrimaLuna uses audiophile grade Takman resistors and SCR Tinfoil caps made in France, Alps Blue Velvet volume control, and input selection is pretty slick using very nice Japanese relays made by Fujitsu. There are two toroidal power transformers. The tube sockets are mounted to heavy-duty ventilated panel mounts instead of a printed circuit board. In fact there are no PCB's in the entire circuit path. It's wired with Swiss made silver plated oxygen free copper.

When a company uses brand-name parts they are pretty quick to mention it in their literature, I assure you. Because it can triple your build costs, and you want potential buyers to know it.

I understand your dealer telling you to upgrade to a ET5. It's $9500. You have an ET3SE that costs $4000. How do you expect him to react when you ask him about the PrimaLuna at $3199?

I've been told straight out by some dealers: I will sell the more expensive product when PrimaLuna is not expensive enough. The customers needs are secondary to the dealer's wallet. Sad but true.

All PrimaLuna integrated amps are Stereophile Class A rated. The $3399, 65lb DiaLogue Premium is incredible. There is another Class A integrated there costing $8000 that weighs 36 lbs, uses a chip for a volume control, and has a simple PCB where everything is mounted. Somebody here look at both internally and give an opinion. Use Google Images.

Given that, the ET5 is a nice hybrid preamp. $9500. 28lbs. 25dB of gain. The other fellow on this thread named Al seems technically adept and he explained the gain issue. At Upscale Audio we will not warranty vintage tubes going into preamps with super high gain. We will warranty current production Russian tubes as I can send them back for credit.

I understand this stuff and I'm most happy to discuss any aspect of it as long as we are pragmatic and not getting into blustery sweeping comments.

dsper
Please let me know how the sound improves over time. I appreciate your input.

Hi Upscaleaudio, glad you responded to this. I bought a Mystere CA-21 preamp from you a couple of years ago and am loving it- great sound, build quality, highly musical. I was wondering if Mystere will be sold again as they have been out of stock for a long time. I know that Durob owns both PrimaLuna and Mystere. Is Mystere still in business?
Thanks.

If I were going to buy their preamp I think I would instead just get their Integrated.

But why buy Chinese products at all when you have so many excellent choices? There are not many products today that a buyer can avoid made in china but high end audio is not one of them.

Hola Hiendmuse

You have a very good preamp. Yes Mystere is still happening and there are new designs that will come out. He wants to implement some new ideas on laddered resistor volume controls. Like yours has.

PrimaLuna caught on much faster than predicted, and there was some heavy engineering that went on to meet some goals that we had. It's more work than you would ever believe. And Herman van den Dungen, the owner of Durob Audio, is a little ummmm detail oriented.

One example was when they listened to different fuses. We all agreed on Littlefuse brand type 213, 218, and 219. He has the factory order them, but he was suspicious of their being genuine even though they were in official packing. Didn't matter a hoot. He took pictures of the end cap markings, sent them over here, then got in contact with a Littlefuse Product Engineer. They go back and forth, only to find out yes, they were the genuine article. While this is applaudable, it really slows things down.

So a lot of effort is being thrown at PrimaLuna. And in case you don't know, Herman is the man behind Kiseki phono cartridges. That's quite an undertaking.