Superb PHONO Preamp ?

samuel you are quite right,the Connoisseur line stage and not the phono stage was awarded the COTY also called the 4.0, my Japanese is not that good. However the previous year the Connoisseur 3.0 was awarded COTY, from which the 4.0's phonostage was derived.

Hi All,
I just changed from the Herron VTPH, a very quiet and slightly warm unit, to the new Vendetta which is integrated into my new CTC Blowtorch preamp. It is fast, musical, has a huge soundstage and mates well with my Koetsu RSP (also new). This is straight out of the box! Can't wait until it breaks in. Meanwhile, I've sold the Herron, the interconnects and the power supply. I love getting rid of all those boxes.

David

David, it was about time to tidy up around there! :) I have heard the preamp you are using (I built it) and maybe I imagine my prespective is a more than a bit tainted, but brand new and dead cold your unit beat the absolute tar out of my fully updated Vendetta SCP2-T which had beaten the poop out of the SCP2-B that Extremephono and others here have been familiar with the past almost fifteen years as a reference......I do want folks to keep in mind that there are probably only half a dozen of the SCP2-Ts out there and only four of the full function CTC units which include the updated Vendetta.......We aren't particularly commercial as we built it initially as an experiment to see how far we could take the design just as Jim Smith did with the Io and Jonathan Carr did with the Connoisseur.....Glad you feel spoiled David as that was our intent as Curl, Thompson and I built it for ourselves as did Jim and Jonathan with their units.......

Oops, make that Jim White in lieu of Jim Smith.....

Bob Crump

Very interesting responses.
I haven't made a decision yet, I've read some posts from a few ( albert porter for example )I know for some time and these are mostly equal with my experiences, but everyone has a different system.....

To extremephono:

..............how 'fast' these phono stages are relative to tube, no matter how good, tubes are 1000x slower than the best solid state. That's fact, no design can fundamentally make tube to have a faster rise-time and higher damping factor than solid state design...............

Hm, maybe you are right, maybe not.
I thought so too
BUT
I use very efficient speakers ( 99db, 8 ohms ) with Nelson Pass SE Design Aleph 0 Mono amps.
This is definetly the fastest possible reproduction which is possible.

Now I bought amps from Atma-Sphere, the socalled OTL Design,
I listened to so many amps ( CAT,WAVAC,Jadis .......) the Atma's blew them by far and they are absolutely on par with the Pass.
I use both a few times a week and I can tell you,The Atma-Sphere are online, not the Pass.
Ok, this will chance of course with different speakers, but I can honestly say

Tube is NOT Generally slower than transistor.

That was one reason I decided to ask the question in the headline.....

Regards