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Review: Blue Circle Audio BC-21 Tube preamp

Category: Preamps

I've been using this preamp, with matching BC-23 phono stage for a year and a half, listening to mainly acoustic music - bluegrass, folk, folk rock, as well as some jazz, classical and pop/rock.

It's a great, fun-sounding, affordable pre-amp. I heard much more seperation between instruments...a larger and better defined soundstage...than I had experienced with similarly-priced (and higher-priced) units that I auditioned. Strings were much better resolved - an important quality for my tastes. Solo acoustic guitar recordings shined!

There's a bit of mid-bass emphasis that some may not like, but is fun with certain types of music. Adjusting speaker placement helped reduce this though, and I do not consider it much of a problem.

For the price I would definitely go with the BC-21 again...I'd love to try the BC-3 sometime, when finances permit.

Associated gear
Kuzma Stabi S Turntable
Classe CAV-150 Amp
B&W CDM-7 Speakers
AudioQuest Diamondback Interconnects
AudioQuest Slate Speaker Cables

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kvburns

Showing 1 response by cpdunn99

cpdunn99's avatar
cpdunn99
639 posts
 
Kvburns,

How do you like the BC23 phono stage? I recently auditioned one, but found that all DIP switch settings (except 47k ohm) had no effect on the sound.

I have a Goldring Excel VX cartridge (moving coil with load resistance of 100 ohm) and 47k, as would be expected, was inadequate. With the toggle switches "on" (i.e., providing 61 db of gain), things were better. However, it didn't matter if the DIP switches were at 60, 69, 100, 250 ohm. They had no effect whatsoever.

The sound is fine; it's just curious that different settings had no effect.
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