TUBE....Starting with Power or Preamp ?

hi supakit,

while either way can work, at yer budget, i'd suggest going w/the tubed preamp. imo, ewe really have to spend big bucks on a tubed amp to get it *all* - the joy of toobs, w/o giving up what solid-state amps do so well. i don't tink this is the case w/pre's - in fact i tink the opposite is true - i tink ya gotta spend big bucks on a solid-state pre to get it *all* - the goodness of solid-state w/o giving up the joy of what toobs do so well! :>)

i *highly* recommend a melos sha gold reference or sha-maestro (their last iteration of this pre). it's in yer price-range, & it's a great-sounding pre - wonderful toob sound that gives up *nothing* to solid-state pre's. in my toob-pre search, i considered the audible illusions, & actually owned a magnum-version of the rogue 99, and the cary slp98 before ending up w/the melos music-director (the top-model melos). i ended-up trying the melos because of the sha-gold i'd heard a few years back. in my search, even a couple dealers that carried the audible illusions, rogue & cary, said the melos was better if i could find one...

good luck, doug s.

supakit, abstract 7 is rite *and* wrong: he's rite in that if ya use the ead for a home-theatre set-up, ewe may want a pre w/a processor loop that will default to the ead's controls when switched to this loop. this allows *all* the speakers - even the two main audio speakers connected only thru the main preamp - to be controlled by the processor's wolume controls. he's wrong about there not being many toobed pre's that do this - arc, bat, sonic frontiers, & vtl are toob pre's that come to mind, that have this feature. i'm sure there are more. if ya get a pre w/o this feature, the only disawantage for home-theatre use is ya gotta use a standard tape-loop for the processor, which means having to adjust both units' wolume controls. having remote wolume controls for the pre & the processor make this only a minor inconwenience, tho, imo. but i'm not into home-theatre, so perhaps it's more of a problem then i assume... ;~) the melos, btw, while not having a default processor loop, *does* have remote wolume/balance controls...

doug s.