phono preamp with volume?

Stanwal, that's exactly my impression of transistors. Both technologies have colorations. Either way the goal is true neutrality. The extremes of tubes are overly lush, the extremes of transistors are overly harsh and dry, yet two preamps that exhibit those characteristics can be put side by side on the bench and be found to have the same bandwidth.

I don't think the truth lies in the middle either, but getting rid of the colorations of either technology will get you a lot, lot closer.

Art Audio Vinyl One. I am continually amazed by the rich sounds flowing through mine. At the price it's a value.

My judgement on tubes was arrived at by comparing my two tube preamps and my transistor one with my two passive preamps. The transistor lacks the "depth" of the tube units but is closer to the passive. The first time I heard a transistor amp in Nov. 1963 the first thing I noticed was that the notes seemed to be more separate than my Dynaco MK 4. A recent review of the Creek passive noted something similar. At first the reviewer thought the passive lacked something an expensive tube preamp had but he finally concluded that the tube was filling up the space between the notes. This is exactly what I hear, but we all hear differently.

Stanwal, What I hear is that tubes will play the low level detail- room ambiance and the like, the same things that the transistors (in general) seem to miss. So IMO, the tube is not filling the space, the space instead is filled with low level detail.

I have heard equipment with 'fat' images too. That seems to be a purview of both tubes and transistors. It seems to me that a lot depends on the quality of the equipment, although the last time I heard something guilty of that charge it was a German transistor line stage that retailed for $25,000. It was built very well- it just couldn't bring home the bacon.