Hello Kub, oh yes I am excited...very much so. I too was surprised of all the variations of the WV. And it was great to see the remote volume will be supported as this was one thing Mike had written that he would not provide.
The line-stage-only option makes a lot of sense for those not into phono and/or who may want a top-notch unit for a HT setup. A very cool design feature here is that when powered off, the WV defaults to bypass mode which is a feature I have been looking for over the last few years for my HT setup. With the TV occupying the vast majority of time with the HT system, I would not want to burn my precious WV tubes. I may have to get this version of the WV for my HT system too!
Downunder, I too have some curiosity about how the transformers will perform. But Mike did go through a lot of effort to evaluate many models, and he came away with liking the Sowters very much with the rest of his tube-based phono stage. For those of us who know his work in past preamps, we have a lot of faith in the possibilities with the Sowters. The noise vs. the dynamics vs. the spatial attributes, all of which people point out as the pros/cons of using step-up transformers, will be heard soon enough when the WV comes out. However, there is a 2nd phono input on the WV (for MM) and this opens the door for an external active MC stage to compare to the Sowters.
I have a heavily modified ARC MCP-33 that is all set to be used into the WV's MM stage to compare directly with the Sowters. Unfortunately the external unit adds great expense beyond the cost of the unit itself as a first-rate power cable (Stealth Dream or Dream State) and ICs (most likely Jade Hybrid) from the ARC to the WV will be far more $$ than the ARC unit itself. The modified ARC is magic but wouldn't it be ironic if the $240 Sowter pair outperformed the ARC and all its added fancy cabling and hand-picked premium tubes! I will find out soon enough.
John
