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REVIEW: Eastern Electric MiniMax Preamplifier (Tube)

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Model: MiniMax
Category: Preamplifier (Tube)
Suggested Retail Price: $1195.00
Description: 3 tube linstage preamplifier
Manufacturer URL: Eastern Electric
Model Picture: View

Review by CharlieV on May 22, 2003 at 10:09:48
IP Address: 66.242.174.174
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for the MiniMax


Review

The Eastern Electric
MiniMax Preamplifier

By Charles Vallejo

Eastern Electric MiniMax
List Price: $1199.00 US
http://www.eeaudio.com/

Intro and Bias:
I first came across Bill O’Connell of Morningstar Audio Imports when he was listing the most elaborate pair of Custom Tannoy Horn cabinets I had ever seen on eBay. Unfortunately I could not afford the cabinets, but I did email Bill and ended up buying his Marchand tube xover. I was on this ten-year quest to bi-amp my Tannoy GRF horns with custom 2A3 amplifiers as per the late Harvey Rosenberg’s recommendation.

Bill had just gone through such a quest. Bill was very helpful in giving advice and seemed to be a true audiophile, one who shares his knowledge so that we can progress up the ladder of audio nirvana.

Bill had asked me at that time what pre-amp I was using. Well, I said depends on the day. I had gone through a Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista, a VTL Ultimate, Canary 601 and was currently using an Allen Wright FVP5 and a Jeff Korneff Custom 6SN7/76 tube pre-amp. He told me he had been using a Hovland and had come across a great little pre-amp out of Hong Kong by a friend of his Alex Yeung. He said he thought it was as good if not better than his Hovland and that an audiophile friend of his agreed. He was thinking of importing it and asked if I would be interested in reviewing it.

Of course I bit. How could I pass that up? Bill asked for an honest review and one that would contrast against some of the pre-amps I have had. I said sure. When he mentioned the price would be a low $1200.00, I was even more intrigued. He warned me that everyone he had sent out to reviewers did not come back. I laughed as I was pretty happy with my Korneff 6SN7/76 pre-amp and did not think I would need another pre-amp. How could I better the sound I was achieving?

My bias is very simple. That is it, simple. I have sold my Marchand active xover and base my system on the simple approach, less is more. I am a disciple of the point-to-point hard wired simple circuit is best camp. I also believe in pre-amps, I feel they add something to the original signal that makes music come alive and provide depth and harmonic structure that source components usually don’t provide. Of course it has to be a well-designed pre-amp that mates well with your amps. I currently run the Korneff 76/6SN7 pre-amp to my Custom 2A3 mono-blocs that use all NOS components and Tango output transformers. My digital sources are a Marantz CD17 and Marantz DV12. My analogue source is a Thorens TD124 MkII with SMEV and ZYX Airy cartridge. I actually use my Allen Wright FVP5 as my phono stage into the Korneff pre-amp. This system feeds my Tannoy Rectangular 1960s GRF’s with 15” Gold Concentric drivers. For me it is basically a dream system and the result of a 10 year audiophile frenzy, yes, I have marital problems when it comes to hi-fi.

My listening bias lies mainly in the realm of acoustic and vocal music. I love the blues, anything with a good female or male vocal, country, some jazz and of course good old rock and roll. I also listen to a lot of my son’s hip hop and R&B. My favorites are people like Nora Jones, Willie Nelson, 50 cent, Emmylou Harris, Joan Baez and Gratful Dead, etc... I do not listen to much opera or classical. My views represented below are strictly related to my listening and system bias.


The MiniMax:
When the MiniMax arrived at my house for review I was very excited and opened it up right away. I had to hear this low cost Hovland beater. The packaging was superb and very safe. The pre-amp was tiny and at first takes a moment to get used to. The finish is superb. It has a beautiful brushed aluminum front fascia with an on/off toggle switch, blue indicator, 3 source selector and volume, simple and aesthetically pleasing. The custom black and dark gray transformer and the3 vacuum tubes (6X4, 2x12AU7) stick out of a very professionally finished gunmetal gray automotive clear coat type finish chassis. Once you get used to the size, this is one of the coolest looking pre-amps I have ever seen. Extremely high WAF factor. This is the first piece of gear I was able to sneak into the system without my wife spitting the dummy (dummy = pacifier). Look at the pictures on the website, it is self-explanatory, very aesthetically pleasing.

I substituted the MiniMax for the Korneff in my main system and fired it up. Wow! The soundstage exploded. Unbelievable. It was actually almost too big for my room. The amazing thing about this little over achiever is the massive soundstage it portrays. In addition all the musical sounds float superbly and distinctively within the soundstage. My Korneff is more recessed and direct sounding in this fashion. All the musicians jump out at you and the soundstage will be as big as your speakers can throw. The primary difference between the MiniMax and my Korneff is that the Korneff had a more “direct” sound, and the MiniMax a more fluid and smooth sound. The MiniMax is lush, but accurate and articulate at the same time. That is a very hard feat to pull off. Asian Audiophiles rejoice, this is your pre-amp. The difference between the Korneff and MiniMax is a lot like the difference between a 300B tube and 2A3, or 12AU7 and 6922. I use the terms direct sounding and smoother sounding. Both preamps are superb and hard to beat. These are both class A examples of well executed simple circuits bringing out the best in their tubes strengths.

The vocals on the MiniMax are to die for, but you still get tight bass and great-extended highs. Barring having a mega buck system I believe any system you plug this pre-amp into will sound better.

I was adjusting to the bigger soundstage that my GRFs were throwing with the MiniMax when I decided to swap in some Reference 3A DeCapos I had at the time. Wow again! I think that may be a match made in heaven. The DeCapos really, really benefited from the huge soundstage and based on that I would recommend trying this pre-amp out with any mini-monitor if you want to improve your system soundstage.

Well then I got to curious. I am having so much fun with this pre-amp, more so than any other I have had. So I took it into the family room where I am running a Marantz DV12 to my big screen, and through a 80’s ADS A2 80 watt integrated amp to a pair of Tannoy 12” Dual Concentric Cheviots. The ADS has a decent amp section, but a less than average pre-amp stage. I inserted the MiniMax into the system and voila. It was like a high-end system, in many ways better than my main system. Ouch. That’s a hard pill to swallow considering all the effort and years put into my main system. Here is a simple system with an average SS amp sounding like a million bucks. I have never put the Korneff in this system because Jeff Korneff warns of system compatibility issues with the 6SN7/76 pre-amp and SS amps, best mated with SET’s. I can tell you that the MiniMax hands down put to shame the Musical Fidelity NuVista, VTL Ultimate, Canary 601 and even the Allen Wright FVP5. That is a recommendation in and of itself. The delivery of music was just all around more engaging. This is one of those components you stop trying to analyze because you are enjoying the music too much. You find yourself zeroing in on what you want to listen to and just basking in its presentation.

The Torture Tests:
Needless to say I was very impressed with this pre-amp. So much that I packed it back up and put it away so as to stop listening to it and send it back so I would not buy it. My wife does not need another pre-amp. But of course I had to sneak it back out. Now I decided critically analyze it with some tough vocal material. I brought out my Emmylou Harris CDs and albums, Joan Baez, Nora Jones and Willie Nelson albums. If you listen to Emmylou you know how hard it is to reproduce her voice without incurring some raspy midrange vocal artifacts. Well guess what, this is the best pre-amp I have heard with her vocals and vocals in general. So smooth is Emmylou Harris’s voice with this pre-amp that you wonder if you are missing something. But when you critically analyze it, there is nothing missing. In fact, you generally hear things better separated in space than I have heard before, many would say it is more articulate and detailed due to this fact. The vocals in Tulsa Queen, Love Hurts and Boulder to Birmingham just come across so delicate and full-bodied it is credible. Emmylou’s voice floats in the huge soundstage with incredible harmonic integrity that it seems like you are in an intimate nightclub playing on a top-notch horn system. You hear all the tonal fluctuations when she belts out a strong long note that it is haunting, running shivers up your spine.

Are you there? Depends on how many beers or glasses of wine you have had. I have never felt “there” listening to any system, I have to have all the visuals and extras that come along with being there to feel like I am there. But, I am enjoying it just as much as if I were there. I find myself humming away and getting carried away in the acoustic space and wanting to have one more beer and one more dance. Ahh, how sweet reproduction can be!

Putting on the Willie Nelson CDs and albums results in the same. An uncanny vocal presence that is so smooth it’s just down right beautiful. Norah Jones really “comes away with me” with her beautiful album. I just play track after track, often repeating songs over and over just to bask in the realistic smooth vocal presence.

My final critical analysis is with Eric Bibb, Willie Nelson and Keb Mo albums. Here is where you can listen to acoustic and slide guitars in their full glory. This is where you separate the men from the mice. Well, all I can say is that every fret fingerboard movement and string resonation is heard with this pre-amp. And again, the way these sounds float and supremely harmonically decay in the soundstage is unbelievable. I have had the luxury of hearing Eric Bibb, Keb Mo and Willie Nelson up close and in very intimate venues and that is where I can compare the real harmonic vocal and guitar sounds to what is coming out of my system now. It is the best I have heard. You hear their feet taping and all the other sounds that where there at the time of the recording and they are represented in an extremely pleasant fashion. You hear the nylon strings on Willie’s guitar. You hear the way Keb Mo likes to tap his feet when playing. You hear Eric Bibb’s fingers sliding across the fret board and the steel in his strings.

So by now you can guess I really like this preamp. Is it better than my Korneff 6SN7/76? No, but it is just as good and they are simply different. Both are supreme. I can say that the MiniMax is much more system friendly than a Korneff. I can plug this into any amp and get better sound than without it. I plugged it into an older Dynaco ST70, a Bryston SS and the ADS and all of them benefited from the MiniMax. It made them better than they are, or at least seemed to bring out their best.

Final Conclusion: The MiniMax or the Chameleon
I bought it. Simply put. You remember I said my Korneff seemed a bit more direct sounding, kind of like the difference between the 2A3 and 300B tube in a well executed circuit. Well it turns out that when I started tube rolling I found out that you can literally “dial in” the sound you want from this pre-amp.

The Korneff I have runs RCA Black graphite Plate 6SN7s, and RCA Black graphite plate 76s which give you a very direct sound. Well guess what, if you put in an older RCA graphite plate D getter 12AU7 in the output stage of the MiniMax driven by a Mullard SQ gold pin E80CC you alter the sound to a much more direct style, similar to my Korneff set up. It turns out I preferred the more liquid presentation from a Amperex Bugle Boy D Getter gray plate 12AU7 for the most lusciously smooth vocals I have heard from any system. So for my favorite vocal and acoustic, in goes the Bugle Boy. But when I am going to listen to 50 cent, bumping in the club, I put in an early RCA 5963 D Getter for an unbelievably tight bass line and airy highs. I never knew my Tannoys could provide such tight bass. The RCA 5963 is not as smooth in the mids as the Bugle Boy, but still head and shoulders above most. Oh, and that to die for bass line, sweet.

So that turns out to be the best part, the MiniMax is like a Chameleon, you can dial in the sound you want from your system by substituting various 12AU7s in the output and E80CC’s (or 12AU7’s) in the buffer. Fantastic. This is what tube equipment is all about, are you a tone freak, bass freak, vocal freak? Well this beauty lets you find your freak and forget about everyone else knowing you have achieved the sound that you enjoy. And that my folks is what it is all about.

Did I sell my Korneff pre-amp, No. But I did add the MiniMax to the list of hallowed equipment I hope I never have to part with.

About the Reviewer:
I have been an avid listener of music for 34 years since the tender age of 3 when my mother used to put on kids music and classical for me while I played. I loved Emmet Smith, The Jackson 5, the Partridge Family and Peter the Wolf. I always had a killer system for my age. I started buying hi-fi when I was 13 and spent many teenage hours annoying the hell out of hi-fi salesmen in my local town. Some were very nice and as long as they did not have a paying customer they would entertain me. I did this review with no bias and no monetary compensation. I did the review because I wish more people like Bill O’Connell would bring these types of components to the U.S. This pre-amp represents a true bargain in our audiophile Cinderella land. When Bill says it rivals his Hovland I believe him. I know it works extremely well in my systems and I absolutely love its tune-ability without breaking the pocket book. On versatility alone it bests my Korneff pre-amp. A true classic.

I can be reached at charlievallejo@hotmail.com.


Product Weakness: Not the last word in neutrality.
Product Strengths: Huge beautiful soundstage. Smooth to die for mids. Detailed and articulate presentation. Simple point to point hand wired circuit. Solid construction. Looks great.


Associated Equipment for this Review:
Amplifier: Custom 2A3 Monoblocs with Tango and NOS iron
Preamplifier (or None if Integrated): Korneff 6SN7/76, Allen Wright FVP5
Sources (CDP/Turntable): Marantz CD17, Marantz DV12, Thorens TD124MKII w/SME5 and ZYX Airy.
Speakers: Tannoy Rectangular GRF
Cables/Interconnects: Kimber, PSC
Music Used (Genre/Selections): Vocal, Jazz, Country/Folk, Blues, R&B, HipHop, Rock
Room Size (LxWxH): 12' x 25' x 8'
Room Comments/Treatments: None
Time Period/Length of Audition: 2 months
Other (Power Conditioner etc.): none
Type of Audition/Review: Home Audition




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Topic - REVIEW: Eastern Electric MiniMax Preamplifier (Tube) - CharlieV 10:09:48 05/22/03 ( 10)