Supratek Owners Thread

Pictures, please! 

Mick just agreed to have mine painted in Pearl-White to match my speakers: these things should be in a design museum somewhere one day.

Well it finally came to pass, and I would like to share it with you, who contributed to this thread: my custom White Grange arrived in the first week of November, exactly a year after I had placed the order with Mick: good things will come to the one who waits! I had to completely rearrange my equipment and decided to build a new rack. I found a store room shelf assembly at Loews made of hard PVC for $145.00. I cut the "columns" to size, filled them with slow-setting concrete, and painted the entire assembly to create a unified look with the rest of my instruments. I prevented sagging of the shelves by supporting them with cross beams suspended on two threaded rods in the center: works like a charm with zero vibration anywhere. Moreover, the rack comes with ribbed shelves, which allow for superb air circulation.  I would love to show you pictures here but I don't know how to imbed them on this thread. So, I am showing them on my FB page (yes, I am THAT old), under "Reimar Bruening". Check it out.

In the beginning, I was taken aback by the very high gain of the phono stage. With the gain setting at around 10 o'clock and the volume at 9 o'clock, I got terrible noise on the left channel. Mick and another stateside customer, Johnny Slate, suggested a bad tube and to switch them one at a time from left to right. As it turned out, they were right: switching the 6688 (E180F) brought the noise to the right channel, and a few days later a new NOS set of tubes from eBay eliminated the noise altogether. However, while the sound began to bloom, I was missing the deep soundstage my previous set up had produced (Sunvalley SV-EQ1616 paired with Ed Shilling's "The Truth" optical preamp). After a three week burn-in, the sound stage improved somewhat but the placement of the instruments and the soloists was for lack of a better word "undecided", "wandering around the stage" depending on the temporary loudness of the respective source; moreover, I had to turn the balance knob all the way to the left to get a somewhat centered image: weird. I also noticed that this effect was more pronounced by the 6NS7 tubes and less so with the 300Bs (the Grange provides both options: the instrument was shipped with NOS 6SN7s by Australian brand Miniwatt, while the 300Bs are new Linlai from China). The 300Bs, however, are more powerful providing an overall "larger" musical experience, but still no precise instrument placement. Also, the timbre of the high octaves of a grand piano tends to be more "percussive" with the 300Bs (this is always a litmus test for me: Da Falla "Nights in the Gardens of Spain" with Rubinstein and the Phillies, RCA LSC3135). Well, that was disappointing. So I  began scouting for replacement tubes for the stock 6NS7s and found an intriguing pair on a Canadian site, Grant Fidelity, namely their custom-designed "Treasure Globes", made by Chinese maker Shuguang (

They arrived this morning and without any burn-in, they sound absolutely amazing. This is the sound which I associated in my dreams with the Grange, while waiting for an entire year for its arrival. The instruments are now firmly in place in a wide sound stage that extends about 3 feet on both sides of my speakers (Ellington Jazz Party In Stereo, Columbia CS 8127, original pressing) and their respective timbres are spot-on; moreover, the balance dial is now dead center. I try to keep this short; only so much: your SUPRATEKs might not perform to their fullest capabilities, if you use them with the stock 6SN7s or 300Bs. If you feel, there could be even more, or if something feels amiss of outright wrong, it's most likely time for tube-rolling. In my case, it became a revelation, and I can now see why other SUPRATEK fans swoon over their instruments. My next quest will be for the optimal 300Bs and 45s: stay tuned. But I am already completely sold with the "Treasure Globes".

OK, can anyone help me with posting an image of my new GRANGE? I seem to be too dumb (if I click on the image icon, a dialog window opens asking for an URL).

I am a Mac user: Macs do not assign URLs to private images. There must be another way. On FB, I just drag the image into the message window, but here this does not work.

Question to the forum participants. Is your balance knob working? And if so: do you hear a dramatic difference between all-the-way-right and ...-left? 

This is the reply I got from Mick today about my balance inquiry:

>>>

Reimar

Theres nothing wrong with the balance, as I said previously, its not a conventional balance control, it only has a very small amount of “shift” compared to a full cut balance control, which has a negative effect on sound quality.

I have a MC cartridge with uneven L R output and the balance control is all the way to one side to compensate , but it could still do with a little more. 

I’m cursed (?) with very precise imaging ears, I can hear the slightest amount off centre sound staging , which is why i built the balance that way, it gives me very fine control for getting an exact central image.

Mick

Michael Maloney

www.supratek.com.au

>>>

I am not talking about a >6dB shift: that would indeed indicate something is wrong with my setup. But my left ear is slowly deteriorating: I described this to Mick when I ordered the additional volume control for my Grange a year ago. What I got, does not work, as I cannot detect ANY balance shift at all, even with my ears directly at the speaker cones. I would probably show Mick some oscilloscope traces to get his sympathy. I have to conclude that either the balance knob is disconnected or that there is a faulty pot involved. On digital feeds I can use the DSP on my Mac w/o any sound degradation (the sound being not great to begin with), but with other sources, especially LPs I am stuck; and I don't want to put another box into the signal path.

Lastly: I had a functioning balance control on my previous preamp, and I could not detect any "negative effect on sound quality".

Any suggestions how to address my predicament? I was so looking forward to the Grange, but this really puts a dampener on my joy, as EVERY tune I play comes out with its center at 2 pm, no matter where the balance knob is pointing.

Mick just sent me this link to his latest blog post, featuring the Grange with a picture of mine on top (Reimar's White Grange): enjoy the read from the pen of the man himself!

If it's "bloom" you want, Mick's creations are hard to beat. Any music passing through my Grange sounds just "grand" and very intoxicating (same preamp-stage as the Cortese). For two months now I have burned the night oil with this extraordinary instrument with all musical genres and analog as well as digital sources. In my opinion, a Supratek preamp is a final purchase.