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Beginners Pre-amp


I'm in midst of changing things in my system and the next thing I want to try is a tubed pre-amp. I do plan to change my speakers to Paradigm S4 and would like to know which pre-amps would work. As for music it varies from Jazz(mostly) to live theater,dance,pop, etc...

My budget is at most 2500.00 new or used. I figured at that price point I can come away with something that I can live with for awhile and totally outclass the Pre-amp section of my receiver.

At that price point new I can come away with a BC21.1 as it allows me the options of the Shallco and a processor loop.

My questions are: What do the members here think of the BC?Will it work in my system. Is it a quite unit and and does it respond well to both tube rolling and PC upgrades.

Finally are there any others I should consider besides the VTL2.5/5.5. I know there's more but I drawing a blank.

Cheers
freakygreek
freakygreek OP
95 posts
 
This is my first venture into putting together a system. Right now I can't afford the likes of BAT, Aesthetix and the like. So I'm looking for something to start me off on a good foot.

Cheers
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chriskeating
189 posts
 
I owned a BC 21.1 and thought it was great for the price. It is superbly constructed and looks cool too. You can coax excellent sound out of it with some nicer tubes and I had great results using a Stealth Cloude nine power cord with it. It has a ton of gain. I put a couple of Tantalums in one of the inputs to pad down the gain a bit.
c123666
871 posts
 
Beware of Convergent Audio Technology preamps. The owner/designer is very clear about wanting to service his own products and does not encourage upgrades. The capacitors are all very securely epoxied (or some type of glue like a rock) to the PCB. My tech called up CAT and was told there is a solution to reduce this glue but we could not have it; ie, send it back to CAT if you want work done on it.

I sold mine immediately. I kept it for about three weeks. I want to be able to upgrade capacitors and so on as required.
tabl10s's avatar
tabl10s
1,129 posts
 
I would look for a Blue Circle BC3. Very nice with lots of gain.
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