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Solid State Preamp recommendation for $2500?

Hi,

I am looking for some Solid State preamp recommendations. My budget is up to $2500, new or used, perhaps could be stretched to $3000 for something really special. I have fairly neutral, easygoing equipment (upgraded McCormack amp and Tyler Acoustics speakers) and like to listen to all kinds of music, but primarily jazz, classical, electronic, and some rock.

Due to changing circumstances in my system (or rather discoveries) I have pretty much determined that a solid state preamp is the only thing that will work in my system. I have an amp and speaker combo that puts out some serious white noise from tube preamps (I have tried 4 so far, all with the same results, and all preamps were OK in other systems). I have tried 2 solid state preamps, both were dead quiet. So, it is either get rid of the amp, or get a solid-state preamp. As my amplifier is a McCormack DNA-125 rev Gold, I would take a serious hit if I were to sell it, and it sounds pretty darn good. I am guessing I would have to spend alot more than the $2200 I have into it to get comparable performance. Unfortunately, I love tube preamps, but am totally fed up with background hiss that is audible at 15 feet and muddies the music.

I did hear a Classe CP-700 recently that sounded wonderful, but it overshoots my budget, and I can't help but think I am paying for features that I don't need, like the cool but (for me) useless interface). I just want a nice 2-channel preamp, old-school/no remote is fine.
dawgcatching
newbee
4,767 posts
 
Re tube pre-amps, premium (tested for low noise) tubes can make all the difference between noise or silence. I have a bunch of tubed pre-amps and none of them make noise at 15' and most are dead quiet until you put you ear an inch or two from the tweeter, and even a couple pass dead quiet at max gain test. Now if you have a pre-amp with high gain and an amp with high sensitivity you might be hearing the sounds of a components noise floor, but that is a mis-match issue........

That said, if I wanted a SS pre-amp, I'd save a lot of money and find a used Threshold FET 10HE....its long in the tooth age wise, but sonically it is still very competitive IMHO. I used to run one with a Threshold SA amp and but for the fun I have with tubes I could still be happy if I had to have SS stuff.
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dawgcatching OP
139 posts
 
Here is what I have tried:

Herron VTSP1a/166: super loud in my system, hiss could be heard in the next room. Unit was checked out by Keith twice, yet he couldn't find a problem. BTW, Keith is a great guy to deal with

Eastern Electric Minimax: both NOS and stock tubes: nearly as loud as the Herron, hiss easily heard at the listening position.

Dehavilland Ultraverve: quieter, but not quiet. Still getting hiss from time to time. I swapped tubes around, which minimized it. Using a Tung-Sol Black Glass 6SN7 originally, which was dead quiet in another system, but made a loud hiss in mine, so I did find a Hytron that is mostly quiet. Still, this is regarded as one of the quietest preamps on the market tube-wise.

There is definitely an incompatibility with the McCormack and the preamps I have tried that have been tube. I know it shouldn't necessarily be the case, but it has proven to be, which is why I am limiting myself to solid-state units at this time. I would rather hear a quiet solid state unit than a nice tube preamp with hiss in the background. I haven't tried any specific low-noise tubes, but the ones in the Dehavilland were supposedly low-noise NOS.
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jmcgrogan2's avatar
jmcgrogan2
6,346 posts
 
Tvad, you are correct, the input impedence for the DNA-125 is 100K, which wouldn't seem to cause an impedence mismatch. I must have been thinking of the DNA-500, which has a 10K input impedence.

However, the issue could be gain matching, as many tube preamps output a higher voltage than their SS counterparts. I also see that the DNA-125 requires only 1V input to drive full output, that's a relatively low sensitivity. By comparison, the DNA-500 requires 2.25 V for full output.
I could only find output voltage for the Dehavilland Ultraverve, which is 30V.

So a 30V maximum output from a preamp into a amp that only requires 1 volt input for full output could well be overloading the amp. Stick with SS preamps, many good ones have already been recommended.

Cheers,
John
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