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Steelhead as a preamp?

I'm thinking of buying another Steelhead to use with two turntables and a cd player without another preamp. When I had one before, I thought I prefered the sound through another preamp, but didn't give the Manley much direct to amps use because I wanted the remote volume that the preamp offered.
Does anyone have a comment on the sound quality of the Steelhead direct vs. the Steelhead into another pre? Thanks.
rloggie
heradot
30 posts
 
Hi,
I owned the Steelhaed II for about two years. Used alone as line/phono stage and also combined with my two line stages Burmester 808/5 and Klyne 7LX5.

Sound was much more dynamic and transparent; much more present using Steelhead alone. Using the Steelhead only as phono pre I got good experiences only using the variable outputs turning the volume control on about 12 o'clock. However I would not combine the steelhead with one of my line stages anymore.

Bye,
Marco
bkonig
127 posts
 
Rloggie,
I only tried running the Steelhead direct (fixed output) using a BAT 51SE line stage. The sound was much better when I ran the Steelhead without the BAT but I had to use the variable output.
cincy_bob
270 posts
 
By the way, I agree with the comments in support of the Steelhead's MM inputs. I experimented running my Dynavector XV-1s into the MC inputs (which routes the signal through the autoformers) and into the MM inputs. I found the sound through the MM inputs to be more transparent as noted above. As long as you have sufficient gain using the Steelhead's active gain stages, I too would recommend using the MM inputs over the MC inputs.
rloggie OP
102 posts
 
The flexibility of the MM vs. MC inputs along with all of the other features is very compelling. I was just hoping to find the best way to use the SH without having to buy a preamp. I'm going to go ahead with one and use it until I have another pre in the house. Maybe I'll find I don't need one in my setup, but I suspect I will. Thanks for all comments and in advance for any more thoughts.
cohnaudio
28 posts
 
Rloggie,

I did not find running the Steelhead into the amps to "soften" things. If anything I found the leading edge, transients and microdynamics much more defined - i.e., it was much more transparent. Having said that, it is less bloomy (as I said, using the moving magnet output) - at times it could sound threadbare. If I had had a really good pre-amp and put the Steelhead through that using the moving magnet output, that, as Cincy-bob points out might have been the ideal combination. But you have to spend some serious bucks to get a preamp that is good enough to let the Steelhead shine. In the end, I have gone with the Dartzeel preamp which is a great linestage and has a great phono preamp
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