Might try a tube preamp

Want a Freya, I’ll gladly sell you mine with the best sounding set of NOS tubes for it. That said, for the money, I would go with the Don Sachs 2. He’s no longer doing crazy combinations of things to them though. He’ll find and match the preamp to the impedence of your amp, and he’ll install an input for balanced cables, but he has tried about every tweak known to man now, so he won’t use Billy Bob’s wang dang output caps or other things that would please customers but degrade the sound. If you have speakers a tube amp can drive he also sells an amazing amp, and both would be under 6K. Not the 5 you spoke of, but it will blow most if not anything under 25K away, and a lot of gear that sells for more. That, or I’ll sell you my Freya with unused original tubes, Ken Rads and early 40’s Raytheons and a PrimaLuna Prologue Five, which will almost certainly sound better than your current setup, though the amp is underbiased so it only puts out 36 watts I believe, but I’ll sell both for 1600 shipped to the lower 48. I obviously went on to higher end gear, but if you start here, you can probably get your money back if you upgrade later. That said, I still second Don Sachs’s gear.

Nothing against the Rogue, they certainly do make nice equipment, but the most neutral 6SN7s are the Shuguang Treasure 1's, aka CV181T. I am sure that New Sensor will come out with something in their Gold Lion or Mullard line soon that competes, but that is the most neutral tube I have ever heard. If you are tube rolling beyond that, you have other issues in your system, and tubes are a bandaid. Like I said before, the Freya is a nice little preamp, but for it to compete it needs Ken Rads for proper tone, and early 40's Raytheons for imaging. You could use the CV181Ts for imaging as well. The point isn't to roll tubes, the point is to get your system right so that you don't need to!

Arugmentum ad hominem, how intellectual and original. That the Freya beats a more expensive commercial product, considering its designer, should surprise no one. Commercial products made in large numbers, and sold through small audio boutiques necessarily cost far more than the component parts do. There is designer overhead, manufacturing overhead, distribution costs, and dealer overhead, to name a few costs. Small independent makers are therefore not only able to compete, but in fact can offer much more for much less. They can use vastly better parts, and can easily better far more expensive gear. Sachs has spent his life as one of, if not the preeminent go to person for modifications and upgrades of Citation and McIntosh tube gear. Your credentials sir, you have owned a few preamps, who hasn't? You have owned a few tubes, I have a crazy collection myself, and Sachs has heard more than us both combined. Unlike you, I used to do equipment modifications myself, though I only did tube gear for myself and one other audiophile friend as I really didn't have time to relearn tube circuits. The tube gear once used for video pickup was replaced by CCD in the 1990s. The fully tubed gear used for low light applications was also replaced by CCD, but we maintained it, we didn't do mods, so I was uncomfortable doing mods on tube gear for others. Anyway, you know more than all, you implied it, so it MUST be true. So stop with they Freya, it is a decent tube preamp for the money, with the right tubes, which you are not using. The original poster didn't ask about a great entry level preamp or else the Freya would have been my recomendation. 

BTW, this is about MY Stasis amplifier, I sent it to Jon because he buys transistors by the hundreds and matches them, and he had identified caps that would fit, with increased capacitance. Furthermore, at that time I didn't work on amps, I didn't have dummy loads, and it was flat out less expensive to have Jon provide matched transistor and such than for me to buy and match a set out of hundreds that I wouldn't later have a use for. Anyway, Jon had installed matched sets and new caps in hundreds of Stasis amps at Threshold, and after Mr. Garcia, but he told me that he had never heard one that sounded as good as mine.

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sean6,229 posts07-18-2004 1:45pmAs good as many Threshold amps are, they can all benefit from component upgrades / internal modifications.

One of my friends has a very highly modified Stasis 2. He swapped out many of the caps, diodes, etc... of the existing circuitry, increased the filter capacitance of the power supply and then had Jon Soderberg of Vintage Amp go through and align it. While this was the most heavily modified amp that Jon has ever worked on, he also said that it was probably the best sounding Threshold amp that he had ever heard. Given that Jon used to work for Threshold and has probably repaired / modified hundreds upon hundreds of Threshold based products, even after they went out of business, i think that his comments should say something about how much parts quality equates to what we hear. This is just another reason why i encourage others to upgrade / modify what they already have, if they are basically happy with it.

With that in mind, i don't think that you can go wrong with any of the mid to later series Threshold pieces, even in stock form. Some are better than others, but all of them have the potential to sound very nice. While I can't say that i've even come close to hearing or examining every amplifier or design out there, Nelson Pass is my favourite amplifier designer at this point in time. He has been for several years now. Sean"

That's okay, you know ot all Mr. Garcia, we bow to your superior knowledge and intellect, only a true genius can use personal attacks after all.

Ken Rads on their own suck. They tend to be enormously microphonic, and completely lack dimensionality. What they do bring to the Freya table is tone, instruments sound real. The early 40's Raytheons add dimensionality. Chrome dome Sylvanias are bright, if you have sufficient high frequency hearing loss, they may sound okay. The really old Sylvanias are supposed to be something special, but who wants to spend 100 or more for NOS tubes that can last years, or days? All that said, if you are content with your system, that's great, until you try to pass it off as more than it is, then your going to called out.

Not bright assumes a neutral system. Nothing is bright with certain components. That they are not bright in your system is great. My system rides the razer’s edge, anything slightly bright added is immediately ear bleeding. For instance, Pasvane CV181 Treasure IIs are slightly bright, Sunguan Treasure 1s are neutral. I’d bet that the T IIs would sound pretty good in your systems. If I put my CS-7’s or B&W 801Ms back in, Sylvanias would sound better, but they have to play through crossovers then, and capacitors are sound sponges, so bright helps. In audio least is more. The fewer components the signal goes through is desirable. Beyond that is personal preference, some like it hot, I used to years ago. The last thing I go to in audio though is argumentum ad populum. Why, because far more  components sell than good ones, and many of those cost tens of thousands. Neutral, transparent, et. al. are extremely rare in a system. I don’t even begin to want to look back at the gear that I have gone through. Admittedly I haven’t had tons of money, but even expensive gear is argued over, Rolland is sark, some Krell gear is dark, etc., etc., etc., ad nauseam. So let’s agree to disagree, but don’t tell me what others think, I seriously doubt that their systems sound would impress me. It’s taken me a lifetime to get to a system where changing a resistor is generally obvious, I stress generally because I haven’t tried every resistor out there. TX2575s are good enough for me.