Preamp Deal of the Century

Opus88 the glare issue seems to have been worked out for me by doing several things.....

1. I tube rolled and bought several sets of 6sn7 tubes here is what I bought
RCA's black base with grey glass
Sylvania's GTW ( I am at work so I can't rememeber axactly but it was the set that were for military use)
2 set's of Tung Sol's all black base
Ken Rads
I also replaced the rectifier tube with a Mullard. so far I have tried and burned in the RCA's and TungSol's. I did not like the RCA's but really like the TungSol's. With the RCA's the high's seemed a bit bright and the mids on some musical passages were harsh. I burned in all of the tunbes for about 100 hrs prior to listening. Did the same for the umbilical cord as well. Have not tried the Ken Rads or the Sylvania's hopefully I get to before my second child arrives. The other improvement I got from Tube rolling was that my loud thud through the speakers when you tap on the pre-amp is now completely gone....Everytime I went to mute or just tap the unit I would get this stinkin loud thud through the speakers...only when you tapped the unit or hit the mute a small thing but it did bother me. With the NOS tubes gone problem solved. It's been great. As for system cohesion I run an Accuphase A50A amp to B&W 802N speakers.

Thanks very much Ooslik...I just received some of the earliest RCA 6SN7GTs, and will try them in my system. I am also waiting to receive a few nice sets of early Ken Rads as well as single set of the Tungsol Rounds. Like you, I have on hand an early Mullard GZ34, but also a Mullard GZ33 and an Amperex 5AR4. The thuds and microphonics vary, of course, depending on what tubes are being used. In most instances, I can live with those issues. I just want to scotch the glare bugaboo. Beyond that, the Cortese is a wonderful unit. I have my slightly modified Air Tight ATM-3 monoblocks, and an extremely fine ribbon/driver hybrid pair of speakers built by the brilliant friend I alluded to in my previous comments. Then there's my Dunlavy SC-IVs, which are sitting in taped boxes in another room. As much as I enjoyed them, I have enjoyed the hybrids even more. Okay, enough for now. thanks again for the [hopefully] reassuring words.

NP and good luck I still think you should give the Umbilical cord a try....hopefully Brad will work out what ever issues he is having right now servicing everyone. If and when you decide to upgrade from the Cortese let me know as I am running the Chardonnay right now but love Vinyl. I run the Phonomena for the phono section.

I have recently purchased a Chenin and have a question regarding noise. I have not read all the posts so I appologize if I missed previous information. I am hearing a destinct hum out of my power supply even though it is away from my amp and not very close to my source. Is this normal? It isn't super noisy but it's definately there.

Bopo,
I'm not sure if this is similar to your situation but I had a problem with transformer hum coming from both my SS amp and Chardonnay power supply. The hum/buzz came from the power supply and not from the speakers and was audible from several feet away. Through some experimentation.. unpluging various AC sources, I discovered that when my plasma TV was on the same AC circuit the hum/buzz appeared. Now with the plasma TV is on a separate circuit and a PS-Audio Hum Buster in line, everything is nice and quiet. Apparently rogue DC current on your AC line can 'rattle' transformers.

Dave