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

@gochurchgo 

A couple days ago I picked up some cables to run the subs off the mains and its much more involving. So, in reality I don't need the 2nd outputs anymore. haha.

I had sold a previous receiver with sub/low outs and it was time to upgrade my mains. Also, if you would've never written this OP, I would have not heard of the Coda Technologies FET 07x preamp. Thank you. What a hobby huh!

I have a phono preamp and have never had the problem of burning out tubes prematurely? Have you done the 'taken everything apart and put everting back together boogie?' And yes reinserted the tubes too? I ground everything, phono, phono pre, amp, anything with a ground on it.

@mitch2,

It does have a remote control and for the life of me I can't figure out how such a simple designed box works with light diodes to get such a sweet sound? Heck if I know?

Quicksilver line Preamps (with or w/o remote) or a used Audible Illusions.

For the price, the quicksilvers will surprise you. 

@rob2rc21  I have the Quicksilver now (non remote) and it blasts through tubes in 6 months, hence this thread. If I could find a solution I'd keep it. Otherwise its $100 in NOS tubes every 6 months (although the current ones are dumping after 30 hours).

Hey gochurchgo, for future reference, what cable are you using to connect your subs to you amp? As I still have one 15" PSA sub?

What did the Quicksilver manufacture have to say when you told them the problem you having with fast burning tubes? You would think NOS would be more robust?

Thanks

I think there have been many excellent suggestions. I don’t believe any of which would be a bad choice. Tubes every 6 months? That can’t be normal,can it?  Maybe have a tech take a peek under the hood. I’ve been running tube preamps for about 7 or 8 years now,and only had 1 tube failure.