DECWARE.....ZTPRE anyone have any expeiriance with one ?

Excellent comments by Larry, as always.

Also, I took a look at the schematic for the ZTPre, which is included in the manual provided at the Decware site. I see that the output tubes are coupled to the output connectors via capacitors having what to me is a very surprisingly low value of 0.1 uf, the caps being in series with 100K pots (potentiometers) that are provided on the rear panel, apparently to allow the preamp’s overall gain to be adjusted.

A 0.1 uf capacitor has an impedance at 20 Hz of about 79.6K, which will produce a significant deep bass rolloff in conjunction with the 100K impedance of the pot. That is particularly likely to be apparent given the excellent deep bass extension of your speakers. And depending on the setting of the pot and the input impedance of your amp (specified as 75K, although it isn’t clear if that applies to its unbalanced inputs or its balanced inputs or to the bridged mode you are using), the resulting rolloff may be worsened significantly.

In saying this, I am of course assuming that the schematic is accurate. And for that matter I don’t see how the schematic and the claimed frequency response spec of 20 Hz to 20 kHz +/- 0.7 db can be reconciled.

Regards,
-- Al

Al...Thanks for pointing that out, didn't even think to look at that. There is no way I am giving up my bottom octave. This is the age old problem of trial and error with changing components. Buy it, dump it, take the hit...buy it, dump it, take the hit. Deware has no dealers so I can't even give a dealer a deposit to try it out for the weekend. One would think however with the schematics posted, Steve Deckert would have been called out on this in his forums.Taking all of this into consideration (And this goes out to everyone) what are your recommendations for a tube pre for this setup. As a side note I really did like the idea of being able to set the output gain to my liking.

Taking all of this into consideration (And this goes out to everyone) what are your recommendations for a tube pre for this setup.

Given the reasonably high input impedance of your amps, even if that value is only half of the specified 75K when they are used in bridged mode (which is very conceivable), and their slightly above average gain, you have a very wide range of possibilities. Given that the sensitivity of your speakers is also somewhat above average (apparently specified as 95 db/1 watt/1 meter) I would just suggest avoiding line stages having highish gains, above say 10 or 12 db or so. Especially if you are using digital sources.

Good luck. Regards,
-- Al

I owned the ZT Pre for a while and it was just OK. It wasn’t long before I started looking for another preamp. I just recently got a new Linear Tube Audio Micro ZOTL Preamp and holy crap it’s good. It makes the ZTPre sound like it was made to work with a Bose clock radio.