Has anyone heard the Rhea Signature Series?

Just heard the signature series today. It is head and shoulders better than the std Rhea. It was a couple of years ago that I heard the std so I can't say specifically, but 4 of us who had heard the std all agreed that it changed what we thought was average performance to very good. Of course it also had a complete set of NOS tubes, as well.

I have the Rhea Standard version. The stock tubes aren't very good at all. I use Brimars,Telefukens, and Siemans NOS.The difference from stock is night and day. I have not heard the Signature version. Three grand is a lot of money! I'm content on my Standard Version.

Couple of years, completely different tube sets... I would speculate that they were probably on different rigs in different rooms also. Swampwalker, that's an interesting way of fairly balanced comparison. I'm sorry, yet I must take issue with your comments, to say the Aesthetix Rhea yields "average performance" and the Signature is "very good"... what prey tell would you surmise to be excellent?

It's funny that most journalistic review and otherwise find the Rhea very, very close to the IO which many consider one of the finest, if not for many, the finest phono stages of all time. I have owned the Calypso and Rhea for several years and compared them directly to the IO Signature, Atma-Sphere MP1 w/phono, and spent good time listening to Manley Steelhead, Sutherland Ph.D., Audio note M9, just to name a few and I find the Rhea as Robert Harley and so many others, outstanding.

Please understand, in no way do I mean this as a personal affront, yet I find your comment to be diametrically apposed to my experience.

Happier Listening!

Hello, I have a Rhea with the Great Northern Sound Reference Mod, it is wonderful. It added a whole other
dimension to my system.
Richard

It's also worth remebering that the standard Rhea came in (at least) two different versions. The early production units were prone to noise problems. Aesthetix modified the circuit, but (to my knowledge) didn't change the model designation. I bought an early production unit which was noisy, but Aesthetix subsequently updated it for me. Jim White told me that the (then) current production units (at the time he did my upgrade) already included the mod he performed on my unit.

Marty