Audio Research Pre-Amp advice

Yes… used LS28SE… or LS28… or as far back as you have to go to meet your budget. Outstanding preamps. You get a great deal of the Reference sound.

I would not be afraid of the Refs though. I have owned a Reference 5SE for ten years… never needed a tube change before I traded it in for my Reference 6SE, which I have had for nearly three years.

+1 on not worrying about service. Most will never need service, they are built to last a lifetime and Audio Research prides itself on servicing older models and having an extensive parts stockroom. Should you keep it for decades, then any competent electrical repair can update the caps.

@daveteauk

The reason I never needed a tube change in my ARC ReF 5SE was because I had a job. The max a day was one hour (often all I could manage was 45 minutes) and I spent a week or two out of the country every month. So, putting hours on a component came slow. I would guess it is not unusual for working folks… having an average 300 hours a year.

Now that I am retired I am able to listen nearly three hours a day much of the time. So, still over three years to change only one tube (6550WE), which I did. So, it will be another year to change the rest.

@daveteauk

Audio Research preamps warm up profiles have changed substantially over the different models. I have not heard a Reference 3. But I have lived with a Ref 5SE and 6SE for a long time as well as a pre-REF one.

The warm up profile of a REF 5SE is that it goes through a big jump up in fidelity after about ten to fifteen minutes of music going through it. Turning it on an hour in advance does not change this. The improvement is very abrupt and happens over five or ten seconds. I had never heard such a thing before. I went to a forum and found a long discussion about this exact phenomenon. This changed completely with the REF 6. There is nearly no warm up period. The sound makes a very small improvement in the first few minutes and is then stable.

I have had four different REF 160 amps in my system for extended times. There is very little change in sound once the amp is turned on. My solid state Pass 350 actually had a longer warm up period. So, each component has a unique warm up characteristic.

I have found the sound profile as suggested by ARC is stable within the tube life recommended. I have found no reason to change tubes early.

While tube rolling is something fun to do with a number of brands of components. I do not do it with Audio Research. The components are exactly tuned for a very specific sound and changing tube brands would compromise that sound quality.