Line Stage Preamps that blew you away $2500 Edition


Passive, tubes, solid state, jewel encrusted moon rocks, whatever. 
 

tell us what line stages blew you Away in the $2500 ish price catagory.

gochurchgo

The last few days my system has sounded amazing. For whatever reason this morning there’s static in the left speaker. These tubes have maybe 20 hours in them. Awesome. I give up on tubes.

@gochurchgo

been looking at used Herron, Hornshoppe, Supratek, Backert. I run subs so 2 sets of outs are a necessity unless there’s another way around that.

There is. You can use an Y or YF rca adapter splitter at each left and right rca outputs if your subs have no speaker wire connectors. Your main speakers suffer no degradation in sound because of their direct speaker wire connection to your amplifier.

There is some loss in gain in your subwoofer if it has only rca connectors but since most subs are set at 2 or 3 gain anyway turning it up is not a problem at all.

In fact, The Truth has an uncanny ability to reproduce the bass to where you actually hear the sound of the instrument playing the bass itself instead of the sound of sub cabinet itself and the subwoofer, playing the bass.

It’s hard to explain until you here it. It’s an after effect of the sublime, spooky quietness of The Truth preamp. Owners of The Truth preamp know what I’m talking about.

At a little over $1000 because of inflation it’s a steal. And I actually like the black Retro/Deco look with the nondescript black simple Bakelite looking knobs. It matches my Clayton M-200 custom stereo amplifier perfectly.

No need to buy used. For a little over $1000 buy new and have Ed Schilling custom spec it for you.

@gochurchgo 

Tubes can be fussy for sure..  Try to wiggle the tubes up, then reseat them. I have found that the tube pins and the socket contacts sometimes need a good rub to get them noise free..  Its all part of their mystique.. 

@tyray 

It’s hard to explain until you here it. It’s an after effect of the sublime, spooky quietness of The Truth preamp. Owners of The Truth preamp know what I’m talking about.

Yeah and that has me curious but it seems like people mention passives have a lock of soul and also bass and warmth. All 3 are things I really like. Driving, propulsive bass makes me happy. I frankly don't care about fidelity, I just want good sound. The word "spooky" comes up often with that particular unit and admittedly it has me curious. I have been also looking at the Hattor as it also have an active stage so I can have both.

@mikem 

 Its all part of their mystique.. 

Yeah well about 40% of the total listening time I do in a year is done in the next 2 weeks and so now I risk have no music whatsoever. Seems like its not worth the BS, I don't know.