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Need passive aggressive advice

Hello
To scratch an itch of mine I purchased a preowned Placette passive device and now I'm hooked!
Passives are very system dependent as we all know but I'm stoked on what its doing, or should I say, not doing in my Horn/300B system,
Since I can't leave well enough alone, I'm looking at more "modern" passive designs and have narrowed it down to three of them.
1) latest from Tortuga
2) " The Truth" from the Horn Shoppe
3) Axiom with Walker mods
All with remote. A MUST for me.
I'm assuming that they will all surpass the vishay placette in transparency. ASSUMING.

Appreciate any and all suggestions/comments/alternatives.

Thanks for your time

Emil




emil
ghosthouse's avatar
ghosthouse
4,306 posts
 
For $700 bucks you could try a Schiit Freya or Saga for $349. Schiit does allow returns albeit with a restocking fee. The Freya provides pure passive, JFET unity gain, or tube (13 db gain) modes and is a balanced design though it will also accept SE inputs and has both SE and balanced output. Very flexible. Very quiet...even in tube mode with volume all the way up and nothing playing - dead silent with ear at the speaker. Just be sure to get some 6SN7s that have been tested for noise; not all 6SN7s are created equal. Good luck in your decision.

http://www.schiit.com/products/freya
rodge827's avatar
rodge827
619 posts
 
Emil,
I had  Ed's Truth Preamp and would purchase one again if needed. Very clean sounding! I sold mine over on AC since I purchased an integrated 300b and no longer needed it.
cousinbillyl
190 posts
 
emil,

You've done your homework. LDR's are the next step in the passive evolution. Caution, the placette is so good, there will only be an incremental improvement. But it will still be an improvement.

Having owned a Placette, we know there's no going back. It wasn't until I heard the Atma-Sphere MP-1 preamp that I made a switch. In hindsight, it's the phono preamp in the MP-1 that's the king. If Atma-Sphere built a stand alone phono preamp, I might still have the Placette.


lak's avatar
Ag insider logo xs@2x
lak
4,624 posts
 
@emil it looks to me like you can't go wrong trying the Tortuga, with a 30-day return policy! If you give it a try besure to let us know your impressions!
acman3
4,239 posts
 
Emil, I am using an older Tortuga Ldr3x and I was amazed that I preferred it to my Shindo Ariegies, which has too much gain in my current system. 

Still mix in the Shindo for it's phono stage, but the Tortuga is very good.

Let us know if you try it, and what you think.






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