Prima Luna Premium Pre

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.

Upscaleaudio, I'm happy to hear Mystere is still in business, thanks for your post. PrimaLuna has gotten a lot more coverage in reviews and advertising than Mystere. I hope Mystere experiences the same level of popularity as PrimaLuna.

Regarding your note about the Little fuse- the only change I made to my Mystere is to change the main fuse from stock to a HiFi Tuning Supreme fuse, which has definitely improved performance with better transparency, tonality, etc. It's well worth the price. This fuse is directional and sounds better with the arrow facing the preamp than away from it.

I read about Herman developing the Kiseki cart from a recent review of it by Fremer in Stereophile. Sounds very interesting!