Transistor Preamp that sounds like a Tube Preamp?

Buy a Coda or Innersound and save a few thousand

Sounds like you should just bite the bullet and get a tube pre. All the difficulties you cited are actually fun to play around with, and when you hit it...well, you know!

Tbg, when you refer to me as "Ass" instead of Asa, is that a typo, or did you mean it to be added to calling me "stupid" and uneducated also?

In addition to a law degree, I have two masters from the London School of Economics, but I don't think formal education has anything to do with cognitive agility, perhaps the opposite. I also wrote for the absolute sound, and for ultimate audio magazines, concerning how consciousness percieves musical meaning, in addition to equipment reviews, so, given this context, I think I'm relatively educated enough in audio to engage you in at least a discussion.

Yes, my "no, no no" was provacative, but no more than that, and certainly did not need for you to call me stupid and then uneducated. So, why did I put bread on the water and say I was waiting? Because I took the time to look at a few of the other threads you have been on and noticed a distinct penchant and pattern on your behalf for engaging others with, how did you ypurself charaterize it in your very long H-Cat defense thread, "vitiolic"?

Therefore, doing a probability analysis, I do not think your similar attitude towards me, or anyone insinuating that the H-Cat SS rendition should not be everyone's cat's meow, is an anomaly.

When someone goes around, throwing around, personal insults on a thread, it is usually because they can hide behind the anonymous nature of the medium. In other words, the anonymity of the medium catalyzes borderline narcissistic remnants in their egoic structure, allowing them to express themselves in a way that the given person would never do if the in-person opinion of peers acted as a conformity brake to their behavior. I hope that you can understand that better now.

I don't like people going around calling other people names. I was a prosecutor for ten years and my experience has been is that when people do that they are usually bluffing, and are just bullies. To help you with this, here is what I'd like you to do: send me an email and I will send you back my personal phone number and you can then call me and we can have a talk. That should solve the anonymity thing, I would think.

So, your original response should have been either (1) requesting a clarification of no, no, no, or (2) indicating that, in the H-Cat, that SS's historical harmonic thinness et al, had been solved and that my opinion had been rendered moot and obsolete, backed by a cogent argument, or (3) perhaps a funny, yes! yes! yes! followed by a nice conversation between you and me where we treat each other with respect and then agree to disagree, assumably.

So, again, since you did not do that, I will respond as if you did. What I find lacking in SS designs - pre's or amps - is a failure to completely render the spatial envelope in which players exist from and, more importantly, from which they project from; sound projects from a source in a symmetrical, fluid manner, existentially speaking, and my experience has been that SS can not capture this relationship of source projection and the integral surrounding space to the degree that the best tube designs can, and that this has been a constant in the past until the present. Are SS designs getting better in this regard? Yes, but something even deeper, in my experience, still eludes them to a greater degree; namely, the ability to lend the impression, project the simulcrum, of a dimensional ground to the musical projection, i.e. that the space is not simply a spatial vessel for the sound projection, but that the dimensional ground which is space itself interpenetrates the sound source so that gound and source are not percieved in the deepest parts of the mind as separate. Yes, that existential reference is more bread on the water, and if anyone seems interested, I'll continue.

Now, tbg, how about that phone call?

Asa, me thinks you protest to much. It is you who posted a singularly non-communicative post and followed that with deliberately misspelling my moniker to Tbag and the hobgoblin comment. When you learn to communicate more clearly and less offensively, you can take exception to others' responses.

I merely suggested that IMHO the H-Cat achieves what heretofore I had not heard in a SS linestage.

You will receive no telephone call from me, especially as I have just learned that you can construct a logical argument from your personal experiences.

My God, "Tbag," deliberate? Never even entered my mind. What's a "tbag" supposed to mean? It wasn't purposeful, but, amusingly, I find it symptomatic that you would think so.

"Merely suggested"? For those of you who want to gauge the authenticity of that remark, I steer you to the H-Cat thread that Tbg has engaged in extensively since 2001, when the H-Cat, and all its subsequent iterations, was/is better than everything else then too. Tbg, do you think there might be a reason that that discussion turned "vitriolic," and so soon? Do you think that, perhaps, it has anything to do with you; as in, in the first thing you say, calling people "stupid"?

On you now taking refuge in the subjective, "IMHO" - which you have not on the H-Cat thread - yes, I'm sure the H-Cat does things that you have not heard before. I am glad to finally hear that delimiter (which we all share), and particularly in your tone.

Best SS linestage? That's a different argument. Maybe, could be.

No phone call? Well...

I apologise to Saxo, and everyone else, for temporarily hijacking this thread. I watched the H-Cat thread now and then, and others, and didn't say anything. It sticks in my craw to see smart guys with expensive equipment, and who should know better, fail to remember a few things - like manners. I like the provocative and the rambunctious as much as anyone, that's fine, its a thread for cryin' out loud, but I think we all know the line, or should. God knows I've said things on threads I regretted, so I look forwards to talking to tbag in the future here on audiogon, where I hope that I, and others, can have a mutually beneficial conversation with him. I mean that. Carry on.