Aleph 3/30 Owners: What preamp do you use?

Drubin is correct about the input impedance issues with Aleph amps.

I borrowed an Aleph 3 from Viggen for a few weeks and loved its sound but the 23K ohm single ended only input impedance resulted in some bass loss and dynamic constriction when mated to my Blue Circle BC21. Gorgeous guitars though!

The Aleph 30 added balanced inputs and raised the input impedance to 47K ohm in hopes of addressing this issue. I believe some of the other Alephs were as low as 10K ohms.

Most of the problems I've heard of with the Alephs had to do with passive preamps and to a lesser degree tube preamps, but solid state preamps should have an easier time mating to the Alephs.

It seems many people try to stay in the 10-100 times range when matching a preamp's output impedance to an amp's input impedance.

Good luck!

I just thought of something. Is there a reason why you're not considering a Rogue or Cary amp? Is it the price of these amps or the thought of having a whole gang of tubes to deal with? If so, I can definitely appreciate that, and that's the reason why I've only used solid state amps with my Blue Circle tube preamp. I've tried the Aleph 3, Blue Circle BC22 and BAT VK200 all with varying success.

Crazy4blues, I've never owned a tube amp, but considering the three amps I've tried recently it seems we have similar goals. The Aleph, Blue Circle and BAT I feel are much closer to what I was looking for than the other solid state amps I've tried. Although many would say that the only amps that sound like tubes ARE tube amps. And yes, the Aleph 3 is pretty damn cool looking.