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In Reply to: Suggestions for phono pre-amp posted by Pacman on September 13, 2006 at 19:23:51:
I couldn't begin to advise on specific $2K Used Stages, beyond
assuming that used Stages at that price point are generally wonderful" I may end up with tubes but I sure like the convenience and long life of solid state "
But I would advise you to dispel yourself of the Tube reliability
and longevity issue assumption, I assumed that for 3 decades, it seems so logical / reasonable, more or less a no brainer, however
I got dragged kicking and screaming into tube amplification by a close friend about 5 years ago, and I've actually found the inverse to be true in my own personal experience, any number of Tubes have extraordinarily long service lives, although this is somewhat dependant upon the actual circuitry, but if you look up the Archived threads pertaining to the particular Stages you're interested in
problems along these lines are anything but closely guarded secrets
and invariably experienced owners have worked around the problems so there are established tube type alternatives and or circuit changes
modifications and chances are they've already been done. and overall this is fairly rare.I love the sound of tube gear and that's all I've been running for the last 4 yrs or so, I know I'm not supposed to but I let my tube stuff run most of the time, out of laziness / forgetfulness and aside
from initial replacement / re-tubing (all my tube gear is used, it's not unusual for the seller to hang on to their real Gems and re-tube with motley assortments of mutt tubes) I have only needed to replace one 45 Power Triode, on any of the 3 power amps I've owned, and one marginal rectifier tube on my last so so DIY 45 SET amp, it's obvious when they go.
And there are occasional issuers where one channel goes out or there is some distortion invariably just a minor finger pressure jiggle
obviates the problem, and in the case of my last DIY SET amp the builder (a first time DIY Builder used assorted cheap original tube sockets so I tired of the dicking around being broke and way too intimidated to replace the sockets I just used a pencil eraser on the tube pins, seated and reseated the tubes a few times to clean the sockets and then used de-oxit on the pins, and never experienced
another glitch.
In my experience with Solid state gear when a channel goes out or has distortion issues and it wasn't a dirty pot or an IC, it's off to the shop time and $$.I was also concerned about tube instability, changing bias values etc. and here again at least in my experience that has never been an issue, and I have extremely revealing loudspeakers so meaningful changes would be apparent.
Granted I'm anything even approaching an expert, or even knowledgeable, I'm not even marginally competent when it comes to tubes and tube technology (I still don't know what a getter is :-(and I represent a sample size of exactly ONE, however I am on an extremely intimate (firmly established lifelong) basis with Murphy of Murphy's Law fame.
I do have any number of friends who are very knowledgeable decades long tube aficionados, and I believe a good bit of the Tube Common wisdom reliability / tweakiness and sensiitivity issues are BS, largely without substance perhaps it's primarily carry over from the marketing efforts of the early solid state manufacturers, not unlike the Belt drive superiority promulgated by early Belt Drive Manufacturers ?
Follow Ups:
at least with me, thanks for a good morning LOL
Am I getting overly sensative? ;-))
As far as sonics I feel from personal experience the very best SS are better than the best tube but a simple low gain tube unit is hard to beat with transistors at the same price.
I haven't had too much experience with the better solid state phono stages. A friend has the big, bad Boulder stage, but aside from that one, my experience has been limited to the one built into my Levinson Ref. No. 32 and the Linn Linto. What solid state phono stages would you recommend I seek out to audition that would work with either a Lyra Titan or Transfiguration Orpheus?
There are probably others too I am not aware of from personal experience.
I almost forgot about the Klyne. I've heard that one and liked it. I am a bit curious about the Ray Samuels Emmeline, but there isn't an easy way for me to audition that one.
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