Emotive sira?

That’s quite a love affair!

im still in the honeymoon stage

what would you say the sonic differences are with the upgrades you mentioned?

thanks, Scott

I also own an Epifania, although it is now on loan to a friend.  The Epifania is a wonderful linestage.  It is quite different from the sound of the Sira, to the extent that it seems a bit odd that the same designer/builder was involved.  The Epifania is considrably leaner sounding (not as prominent upper bass and lower midrange) and is not as "romantic" sounding as the SIra.  The Epifania is a much simpler design, so it is a bit surprising how much more it costs (even accounting for it being a more recent model).

I recently got to hear an old VIta amp and it was very nice sounding.  It's unfortunate that Fred is out of the game.

Going from the stock caps to Sonicaps, the sound became less colored, but also a bit leaner and harder sounding. When Fred changed the Sonicaps to the V-Caps, he also did the autoformer volume control. Since I can't say what each would do individually, as a whole the sound became more organic, smoother, transparent, just really better. It's the equivalent to looking out of a window, then opening the window and removing that layer of glass.

Fred hasn't updated his site for long time, but he's still active. He just updated my Circa phono stage. Since he does lots of custom work he may even have other suggestions.

This is the best preamp I’ve owned and I’ve had several

theres more space around instruments and vocals in a harmony are more fleshed out and seperate

its quite amazing!

I had the Sira in my system for a short time but I did do some tube rolling for the input tube. Aside from a Tung Sol 5687, I tried Bendix 6900 and  RCA 7044 tubes. The 7044 is a nice sounding tube, but many were noisy.

In my Epifania I'm using a Brimar 5R4GY/CV717 rectifier and I really like it. I also have used RCA 5R4G, TJ meshplate 274, and the Phillips Holland 5R4GY tubes. I didn't try different rectifiers in the Sira.