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Line Stage battle: ARC LS26 vs Aesthetix Calypso

Dear Members, This is my first post on Audiogon & I would like to thank Audiogon and it's members for a fantastic community of dedicated fans of high end audio. For my first post, I thought I'd pick two exceptional line stage pre-amps costing roughly the same, yet created along very different design philosophies and pose the question - In a no-holds barred cage match between the two, which pre comes out the winner?
melbguy1

Showing 1 response by pdreher

pdreher's avatar
pdreher
1,234 posts
 
Kind of tough to compare the two unless you've owned & experimented with both. However, as an owner of the Calypso, I can say from experience that the Calypso can be transformed from very average to exceptional with the addition of $500 to $1,000 in NOS tubes, with emphasis placed on upgrading the 12AX7's.

I witnessed drastic improvement upgrading stock & new production tubes to NOS Mullard CV4004's in the 12AX7 slot & Tesla 6922 gold pins. Experienced further, albeit less dramatic improvement upgrading the Mullard CV4004's to the pricey Mullard 10M Gold pins.

I have no need to try a different preamp for the foreseeable future.
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