anyone heard a Rogue Athena?


Has anyone listened to the Rogue Audio Athena preamp? I've heard the 99 at a dealer while auditioning some amps (powering Rogue M150 monoblocks and then the VTL ST150, into Focal 1027be's) and that setup sounded very nice.

I'm starting to think about a new pre, and doing some prelim research, but I can't find much of anything on the Athena.
jerico
Jerico, glad you're liking the Athena.

Keith - I'm in Atlanta. I only had the lower-lines of Rogue gear available for audition down here. Just took a leap of faith when the Hera showed up in the classifieds this winter (during the most particularly nasty snowstorm). I knew it wouldn't suck since I liked the 99 Magnum/Atlas pairing, and the price was too nice to refuse. I was just starting to budget for a new Athena when that Hera popped up :)

My former local dealer is going in a different direction and will have an option to audition some of the nicer Rogue gear on appointment, soon. Otherwise this stuff has been pretty hard to find, yeah.
I have compared the Rogue Athena to the AR 26 the CJ at over $4k and a Joule electra 150mk -2 and the Rogue was much cleaner sounding with better Bass ,also having a seperate power supply makes for way less noise downstream.One thing I did do though and with this it sounds IMO a little Better than thier Hera at $3k less with this Cap upgrade. I replaced the 4 Mundorf supreme capacitors ,with Mundorfs Silveroils and it was a Big improvement as far as involvement and dimentiality around the instruments and several freinds that heard the 2 versions agreed. This is the only thing that was needed, the build quality is Outstanding as well as it's functionality for $5400 with the Mundorf Silver oil caps you loose nothing and gain a tremendous3 dimentional
sounding Preamplifier!

"So to shorten this story ...I sold the M-150's and just bought a Zeus...that thing is BIG...That big boy puts out some sweet sound."

Enjoy it, Keith944t. I just sold mine a few weeks back. You're in for a treat with that amp. It served me well. Do you have KT90s? That made an amazing difference, as did upgraded NOS signal tubes and HiFi Tuning fuses. Good luck.
For Athena users: Are you using tube dampers? The pic on Rogue website shows them and I've seen other preamps with 6H30 tubes using dampers as well. I have Magnum 99 and am considering the Athena.