K&K any comments?


I think I finally decided on the K&K Phono preamp, is there anything I should know? I plan on using a sumiko blackbird cartridge and vpi tnt turntable.
pedrillo
Enjoy! That's about it as far as what to do. Maybe Herbie's Halos. I found mine works best using Golden Sound DH Cones and Squares. I use, among others, A Sumiko Celebration and it is top-flight.
I,m betting that the K&K will keep you happy for a long time. If you do get the urge to swap it out, make sure to take the effort to listen to whatever you may have your eye side by side with the K&K before you decide.

Best and enjoy,

Dan
I had the opportunity for an extended evaluation of the K&K Phono Preamp. I wanted to like it; assumed I'd enjoy it; was predisposed to buying it, but decided against it. Whether it works for you depends very much on your system attributes. While you can easily interpret my comments as a negative review, I intend them as descriptive of what I experienced. In a system where phono is the primary source and you have brightness to compensate for elsewhere in the system, the K&K may be quite viable for you. Certainly 30 years ago as the phono section of a full preamp, it would have been considered excellent.

The K&K is superbly smooth, to a fault. It has a creamy signature sound that is euphonic, unintrusive, tonally commendable, and is certainly very easy to live with. But it is dynamically unexpressive, always damping musical excitement. I found it tonally accurate but softening of detail, obscuring of articulation, quite old-school in being creamy but uninvolving. No snap or jump. It chisels off every edge it encounters. It spackles over the textures in brass instruments, which many people like because it makes horns sound like they wished they sounded, rather than with the brightness and sometimes harsh texture horns in real life actually have. Guitars, harps, plucked strings are harmonically correct but their energy is damped. Dynamic projection is tamped. The sound stays on the other side of the room behind the baffle plane of your speakers. But everything is buttery smooth.

Spatial imaging, soundstaging are excellent. Among the best. Noise is higher than I'd like to hear in a contemporary design.

I'm tube-centric but impressed by some solid state phono gain stages. I directly compared the K&K to Manley Steelhead (tubes), Jasmine LP 2.0 (solid state), Bel Canto Phono 1 (solid state). Cartridge is Denon DL103D. Linestage, Klimo Merlino Gold. Amp, Audion Black Shadow 845 monoblocks; also Audiopax 88 monoblocks. Speakers, Zu Definition. Also listened on Stax headphones driven by a vintage Stax SRA 3a tube headphone driver. The Zu Definitions are wideband, exceedingly revealing, lots of dynamic jump factor. The K&K sounds beautifully smooth, dynamically anemic, uniformly softening in detail on my gear.

Build quality, parts selection and quality, overall execution is to a high standard. Tube rolling did little to change the essential dynamic blandness of the K&K. For me, this phono pre came in fourth among the units directly compared. It committed no sins of commission and for that alone it can earn a place in some listeners' systems. However, for me, the K&K's sins of omission preclude me recommending it.

Phil
Phil, I think he already decided on the K&K so why rain on the parade? And you want to compare units that retail at 3 and 4 times the price?