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Vinyl Asylum Welcome Licorice Pizza (LP) lovers! Setup guides and Vinyl FAQ. |
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Vinyl Asylum Welcome Licorice Pizza (LP) lovers! Setup guides and Vinyl FAQ. |
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In Reply to: Seeking recommendations for warm, rich, fat sounding, syrupy tube phono preamp posted by Mr Blue Sky on May 19, 2017 at 19:29:48:
Mr. Blue Sky, you might consider the Eastern Electric Mini Max Phono. You'll have to find one used to meet your budget and it won't get you all the way there with its stock tubes, but a little tube rolling will pay massive dividends.
They're usually around $750 used, which leaves some budget to buy a few tubes. The EE uses four tubes and the 6x4 rectifier tubes are cheap if you decide to change. For the other three I mix one 5751 with two 12x7s. I've enjoyed Amperex, Mullard and Telefunken 12x7s for different reasons (and, of course, there are sonic variations within each brand).
I would guess that I have around $150 invested in the four tubes I currently use.
I haven't compared the EE to a ton of other phono stages so all I can offer is this:
- Compared to refurbished Dyna PAS3, the EE has vintage tube-gear tonality without the Dyna's bloated fuzziness. The EE has a lot more detail while still delivering sweetness.
- My Sonic Frontier hybrid SFP-1 has a lot of good qualities and seems to perfectly straddle solid state and tube, but at the end of the day it doesn't give me the same glow as the EE. I still like it and wish I could find a place to use it.
- I use a PS Audio GCPH in a mono system but I've listened to it in my stereo rig. It has more detail than the EE and nice tonality but the music feels like it's strapped to the speakers. With the EE, the music spreads into the room and the speakers disappear. It isn't subtle.
- That Yaquin thing that everybody seems to like. I didn't. No contest compared to EE. I jumped on the Yaquin thing early and maybe they've been improved but I'll never know.
Hope this actually helps. I'm sure that the folks who demand accuracy in all things hi-fi are nice people but they're just setting themselves up for a lifetime of listening to the same 50 records. If my inaccurate system can bring some life to poor recordings while still sounding gorgeous with good recordings, I feel like I'm the winner all day long.
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Follow Ups
- RE: Seeking recommendations for warm, rich, fat sounding, syrupy tube phono preamp - Jeffrey Lee 06:30:30 05/22/17 (0)
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