OPINIONS ON ROGUE 99PREAMP

David,its to bad you have that tube noise thats driving you up a wall. I had that noise with my Rogue 66 and I used a Vansevers Line unit a model 85 and it lowered the noise a little bit, I also floated the ground on the pre-amp that helped a little more,Did you asks Mark if the tubes you had were the NOS that he sells for that unit. I know he has that 12ax7 lps in the front end of my Rogue88,I don`t have to much tube noise, after I used that line unit from Vansevers, did you get your dealer to let you try one?Any way maybe the good old boys [ Carl and Albert ]can come up with some things you can try.You can try some of the things I`ve done and see if that helps, it dosen`t hurt to asks the dealer for a line unit to try out, just make sure they don`t mess up anything else, line units sometimes do more harm than good. Greg

I'M NOT AN EXPERT ON TUBES, per se...I really wish I had the silver bullet for your problem, but without hearing how "severe" the rush is, it's hard to say if anything is actually acting up, or not. Do you hear anything power supply related along with the rush, or is it just a "creamy" and smooth sounding tube "whoosh"? ONE THING I WILL SAY IS THAT PHONO STAGES ARE A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT ANIMAL FROM A LINE STAGE. The solid state phono stages I've had HAVE ALL HAD TRANSISTOR RUSH (louder than I preferred), because let's face it, the thing IS an equalizer (to get the required reverse RIAA curve). THERE ARE ONLY A FEW TRUELY QUIET PHONO STAGES THAT I KNOW OF, and they're all solid state (and I can't afford one of them right now)...most of the ss ones are noticeably noisy, I can't imagine a "quiet" tube one. ANYWAY...if you've isolated the anomaly to the phono stage, then it must lie with it somehow. HOW MUCH GAIN DO YOU HAVE IT SET FOR? ONE MORE THING: What you definitely don't need to do here is use cheap-assed CD players as an excuse to give up on digital altogether. It's just not healthy. I REALIZE YOU'RE FOCUSING ON VINYL RIGHT NOW...so am I (about to install another Benz cart), but CD's should be part of everybody's listening experience, because they allow you to hear music when time is short. BTW, a dealer once claimed to know Michael Fremer's personal e-mail address, but said he had forgotten it. Said he'd get back in touch with me if he remembered it. I said thanks, but I wouldn't hold my breath...I doubt he can ever even keep an e-mail address more than a day or two...

Many tube phono stages are inherently noisy and there's not much you can do about that. There are only two ways to dramatically reduce the amount of noise (hiss) relative to the music signal. First is to use a quieter phono stage, like the Lehmann Audio Black Cube, which is a good way to go. Second is to use a cartridge with a substantially higher output than the one you are presently using. I believe that the Grado Platinum you're using is a high-output model and you may not find anything suitable with a substantially higher output level. Another possibility is that there may be something wrong with the circuitry of the phono stage (not the actual tubes -- perhaps bad/noisy resistors?). You shouldn't be hearing much tube noise with a high-output cartridge considering the Dyna 70 amp and Paradigm Studio/80 speakers you use. If the particular Grado you're using is in fact the high-output version, I'd send the preamp back to Rogue to check the phono circuitry for possible noisy parts(other than tubes). Good Luck!