Psychicanimal, I did as you suggested and looked thru your archives on analog. You certainly have lots of entries, but only two that I could find related to the EAR pre amp. In one you inquired about the pre amp and in the other you responded to a poster that tubes were always noiser than transistors and that they should stay with solid state. Is this the extent of your experience with the phono pre that I recommended? Or did I miss something?
Please tell us of your personal experience with the EAR phono pre amp. It has 68db of gain - with quiet tubes it should present no problem to any MC cartridge but perhaps ones with the lowest out put. Medium or high level output MC or MM cartridges would create no problem for this pre whatsoever.
And for the sake of further discussion, assuming that there was a very low level of tube rush on a very low output cartridge, how would you rank that noise with all of the other noise and distortion inherrent in vinyl, such as residual groove noise, wow and flutter, pre echo, tic and pops, inner grove distortion, distortion caused by off center spindle hole, vta settings not consistent with thickness of the disc your playing, etc. I for one would find this noise to be the least objectionable. Or are you a SS fan who finds tubes objectionable in general?
By the way, it would be nice if you would post the equipment you use to make your evaluations - I can see that you use a Technics 1200 and, and at least you were, using a SS transformer. What else - tell us about your electronics, speakers, and environment, so we can judge for ourselves whether or not you have any the equipment and the experience needed to really make meaningful evaluations of high end products.
Incidentially, I still don't see any recommendations for the inquirer.
