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Pre for the Manley Snapper

Everytime i visit a hifistore, and tell them about a pre for the Manly Snapper. They always tell med different preamps, and the shop that has the Manley snapper mono amps they tell me, that i cant use that or that. I have to but the pre they are selling. 
And of course i can buy the Manley Steelhead, and thats the end of it. It will fit like a glove. But i hope to find something cheaper than the Steelhead. Probably with a dac and streaming device. But i hope for a pre that dont have digital volume. Because with digital volume, i get the feeling when i play on low volume that there is something holding back the sound. It fells compressed in the sound, if you understand my thinking. 
So does anybody know of a good pre for the snapper that dont cost more than maybe 5.000€ perhaps.
So any suggestion you good folks out there in the sound jungle

Haakon 
128x128heidrun
pryso
1,915 posts
 
Agree the Jumbo Shrimp seems the most logical answer.  However it is a line stage, not a full preamp, so no phono section.  I've read good things about the Manley Chinook phono stage (a stripped-down version of the Steelhead) which could then be added.  That would give more flexibility for inputs, balance, etc. than going with the Steelhead alone.
stevecham
3,340 posts
 
I should have mentioned that I also had a Chinook before the Steelhead and it is a stripped down version. I used to have balanced ICs for a Bryston preamp and power amp and, unless you have to run ridiculously long ICs, I don’t feel they make a perceptable difference in sound quality. Good shielded unbalanced IC’s keep things just as quiet.

But most high end "full" preamps don’t have built in phono stages so, just because it doesn’t have one doesn’t exclude it from being a full preamp.
murraylives
2 posts
 
You can run most anything with the Snappers and their 330Kohm input impedance. Also don’t really need to worry about XLR unless you’re trying to run your amps in a different room from the pre or something.

Manley pre’s tend to do a couple things really well (at most), and that’s it. I love the 300B preamp with a Chinook, but that doesn’t sound like it’d meet your needs.
heidrun's avatar
heidrun OP
7 posts
 
When i speak to a dealer of loudspeakers. They always want to sell what they have. And most of the dont have for example the Sonus Faber Olympica III loudspeakers, and i love the sound of the Olympica III, but it is also difficult to get to listen to the Snapper and  Olympica together. But when i tell them about the combo, they always tell me, that that aint a great combination, but that i instead should buy the loudspeakers they have in the store.
So i wonder. Have anybody listened to the Snapper and Sonus Faber together
pryso
1,915 posts
 
steve, not that this matters to the OP but the traditional definition of a preamplifier is a control unit which includes a phono stage.  Back in the 1980 with the emergence of CDs enough consumers abandoned LPs that the phono stage became redundant.  So manufacturers responded by producing control units without built-in phono preamplifiers, they became known as line stages.  Thus the Jumbo Shrimp is a line stage.

Of course all this led to much confusion over the years. ;^)
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