Manley Steelhead used to directly drive amplifiers

I have a Steelhead and have also rolled a lot of tubes, trying various NOS tubes in the 6922 position including Siemens CCas and Mullard and Amperex tubes.  I finally settled on some Telefunken 6922s I got from Upscale Audio.  For the 4 white followers I tried some GE and International 7044s, Raytheon 5687s, and Amperex 7119s, but found a great deal on the unobtanium Bendix/Mu 6900s.  The 6900s are very expensive but the way to go.

When my Essence preamp went in for repairs I did try using the Steelhead as both a phono stage and linestage into my Essence monoblocks. As posted above, it was a little lean, harmonically bleached, compressed, and lacking soundstage size as compared to the Essence, which has the power supply of many power amps--it outputs 38 volts at full output.  The Steelhead also did not have anywhere the gain and I had to run it pretty close to wide open.

I use single-driver speakers of my own design:  12" Audio Nirvana alnico drivers in homebuilt mdf cabinets laminated in white maple, along with a JL Audio F113 subwoofer.  My front end is an SME 20/2 table, Graham Phantom arm and Lyra Titan i cartridge. 

nkonor, I had several CAT preamps, a Reference Mark II, Signature Mark III, and Ultimate Mark II if I remember correctly (I have a photographic memory but it hasn't developed yet).  The first two had phono stages but I had a gain problem, or a lack thereof, with my Audioquest AQ7000nsx cartridge that had a 0.3 mV output.  I think the CAT only had about 44 dB of gain or something like that and I had to run the preamp volume control at 2 to 3 o'clock.  Some LP's that were recorded at lower volumes like MFSL titles just were too quiet and lacked dynamics.   I have had several standalone phono stages since including my current Steelhead and I have an Essence preamp that outputs 38 volts at full output, so this is no longer a problem.  It probably isn't the best comparison as my CAT preamps were older types and my system suffered from low gain, but I did have the same cartridge and the Steelhead in my opinion is a much better phono stage.  Hope this helps.