Supratek Owners Thread

@hawkrising said:

I ordered a Cabernet 6SN7 a couple of weeks ago. Expecting a three-month wait. Came here to learn more about this preamp. Looking forward to receiving it.  

I have come to love mine. I will say my initial impression was an overwhelmingly negative one. My DAC pushes out 4v over the balanced connection and that apparently overloads the input to the Cabernet. It made a terrible, compressed sound. Since that was my initial impression it really soured me on the device. I eventually figured that out and switched over to a single ended input which has the regular 2v output and things have been fine. 

The other thing I hated was that, compared to the passive section on my Ferya+, I could not get decent bass with the Cabernet in my system. No matter what tubes I tried the bass was just disappointing. running El38 tubes in my amp were especially impressive with the passive amp and just sounded lifeless with the Cabernet in the system. I'm not usually a big believer in burn in but it is the only explanation I can think of for the turnaround I heard. I now get the big, lush sound I was looking for along with solid bass. 

Although curiously I still can't get decent sound using the EL38 output tubes in my amp if I use the Cabernet. The clarity and frequency range I get from them with the passive is impressive. It all seems to go away when I use the Cabernet. Luckily I can use a wide variety of output tubes with my amp so I have several other combos that sound amazing. Makes me worry though if and when I get a more conventional amp that can only use a single kind of output tube. Anybody have any idea why the Cabernet might have such a bad impact with a specific amp output tube?

Hmmm….maybe the maker would have an idea. Why not contact Supratek?

Looking for others’ thoughts. I’m now in a position to upgrade from the Chardonnay, so a couple of days ago I asked Mick what would an "all stops out" single 6SN7 Cabernet look like. He responded that "all out" would be the Grange Signature circuit, but would need the 6J5 instead. It seems he could do it all in the Chardonnay’s main case, since the two extra power supply tubes showing in the the Cabernet photo are 6L6’s moved over for the DHT Cabernet, not the 6SN7 one.

I have some reading to do about the 6J5 (there's a long head-fi thread). My inclination: After going through lots of NOS 6SN7’s and 6F8G’s and equivalents, and lots of time and $$$, I find the Treasure Globe from Rachel of Premium Vacuum Tubes in Canada (from China) easily the best of the bunch for my tastes and hate to give them up, afraid I wouldn’t find anything as good among the 6J5’s. Another possibility that I tossed out to Mick is a Grange Signature w/o the phono section, but don’t know what tubes are involved in that beyond the 6J5, assuming he’d even do that.

Thoughts? Thanks,

If you already have 6sn7 and equivalents you like I would just go with that. If you get curious about 6j5 tubes you can always use an adapter to go from 1 6sn7 to 2 6j5. 

If you are someone that likes experimenting with tubes you might want to get your preamp switchable between 6v and 12v. It costs extra but it has allowed me to try out some tubes that I couldn’t before. The 12sx7 are a stand out and I was actually able to buy several pairs of TS round plate 12sn7 tubes for a reasonable price. 

So either I am really stupid or the Cabernet has one of the most epic transformations with burn in ever. I have complained multiple times about how my Cabernet preamp couldn’t handle the 4v output of my DAC via its balanced inputs. Well, I tried it again all these months later on a whim and its fine.

All I can figure is that I was on the wrong input when I did my initial test. I have noticed that there is quite a bit of bleed between inputs. If you put as signal in on one input you can hear it if you select an other input. That obviously isn’t a big deal because you won’t be playing multiple inputs at the same time. But when I first hooked the Cabernet into my system I thought it was really quiet and very distorted. Then I tried a different input and it got MUCH louder. That’s how I knew I had been on the wrong input. The signal was still really compressed and distorted though. 

Did I really not try another input originally? I find that hard to believe but it is the most likely explanation. So yeah, the Cabernet is fine with higher input levels on the balanced connection.