Bryston BP-17 cubed or Benchmrk LA4 Preamp

You should try the Holo Audio Serene preamp. I have the LA4 and the Serene. They are almost identical, except the Serene is a bit warmer but not too warm.

After all this preamp testing, my pocketbook is a bit lighter but I have  learned a lot.

The smoothest, sweetest, most pleasing sound is from a 1980 vintage Paragon System E tube preamp that I bought years ago new. I recently rebuilt the external power supply, replacing everything except the transformer. The caps were out of value and I needed to size a resistor to supply the 12V heaters. I installed six new Genalex Gold Lion ECC83/B759 tubes to replace the vintage Tungsram 12AX7 tubes that were the original equipment.

I've been using this set-up now for about two weeks. Really sweet and articulate strings and female voices. Beautiful. And I think it has passed the long term smoke test.

But... there is no remote volume control!

I put the Levinson no 38s into duty as a volume control . It has exquisite control of volume (0,1dB steps !). And it does the conversion from single ended RCA signal inputs to true balanced outputs is done insoide the no 38s! Two problems solved.

The end of the journey.

Now I'm off to create more problems for myself.....

Congrats on using the Paragon System E. I have one as well and is extremely well built and crafted. Tough to beat at triple the price