2. amps-preamps
  3. 176740-144705

Upgrading from Primaluna

Recently went down the front end upgrade path and am running a nice table and phono now. I'm curious as to what the weaker link in my system is between my Primaluna Dialogue Premium Preamp and my Dialogue Premium Hp Power Amp. I'm considering swapping out the amp to a Ps Audio BHK250 for the summer to avoid heat, but am curious if I would be better off dealing with the heat and moving up to say an Allnic L-7000/Arc Ref 3 for the Pre. I'm happy with tubes on the front end, but curious if I'm running out of gas with 88DB efficient speakers and a single chassis tube amp. Which amp would you upgrade first and what benefits would you expect?

128x128j-wall
coppy777
151 posts
 

Definitely get the speakers farther apart and toed in more.  It costs nothing.  Move your listening seat forward to create an equilateral triangle, you can move it back a bit, =10%, later.  Don't know how the PL sounds with your speakers, you could ask that crazy guy on the West coast for advise.  PS audio gives you a free trial period so no risk to order.  That SS amp will sound very different than the PL.  This may not work... but, can you move the speakers to the long wall?  May be a real improvement if it can be done.

Have fun!

coppy777
151 posts
 

Also, want a cool running amp?  Try PS Audio's Class D mono blocks. My Wilson dealer tells me he's got some customers with big Wilson's running them and they sold pretty good.  A reasonable endorsement.

rbyington711's avatar
rbyington711
66 posts
 

I own a PS Audio 250 amp and matching pre amp and I am very happy with the sound. My speakers are floor standing SF

dbt's avatar
dbt
94 posts
 

I had the PrimaLuna EVO400 preamp and power amp combo.  I wanted SS as well and replaced the PL combo with a Luxman L-509X integrated amp.  I like it better than the PL I had, although the PL was very nice.  The Gryphon Diablo 120 or 300 is the only other integrated amps I would like to hear in my setup in the future. It sounds like you want to stick with separates, but the integrated amps I mentioned are well respected pieces.  The new Luxman M-10X power amp will have more juice than my L-509X integrated amp since more power is your goal.

jbhiller's avatar
jbhiller
1,439 posts
 

I modded a PL Dialogue HP before.  I found the two coupling caps (as shown in Margu's photo they are the black VCaps) make the most improvement and are coincidentally the easiest to swap out.  These are directly in the signal path. 

While I ended up doing a full recap, (even more than Margus did), I found the others didn't make a significant difference.  Before doing the caps on the power tubes, I'd even try the two films linked on the massive Nichicon electrolytic that smooth out the power supply. 

All that said, modifying the Primaluna did make it sound better but it didn't make me love it more so I sold it. 

 

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