As the manufacturer of Supratek I try to stay off the forums as I dont really think it is possible to be unbiased, but this post needs to be reponded to.
In my opinion, there was nothing wrong with Jewel's pre-Jewel rang me after having trouble getting sound. I went through the procedure with him and it turned out he had the tape minitor in the wrong position.
If he had tried again it would have been ok, except he connected his interconnects backwards or to the wrong outputs and did something to his power amp.
Nothing I can do to protect against that.
The Chardonay is a very robust and reliable preamp with a very longlife time built in. I would expect them to be still working when most of you are gone.
But like a F1 Ferrari it is completely hand built with no PCB's or any sound degrading practices.
This form of construction can lead to super performance- the difference between a PCB based pre and the same design constructed terminal to terminal is not insignificant.
It can also lead to the occasional fault- no one is perfect and despite the fact that I'm getting much better the human factor can get it wrong. I stated counting the connections in a Syrah one day and soon gave up. About 1 in 15 pres has a problem. OK no other manufacturer will come out and tell you that, but the truth cant hurt you if it is understood.
I could get a PCB designed for the circuit and I could build them twice as fast and eliminate the possibility of a mistake- but the cost is too high- the sonics would suffer terribly and there is no way I'm going there.
There are two reasons for the wide use of PCB's- economics and the fact that non-technical (cheap) staff can assemble them.
What I do is make sure the back up is as good as you can get- no one with a problem has ever complained about my back up- I drop everything to get it sorted and frequently demand the unit be sent back at my expense to be repaired and sent back in as short a time as possible. It blows any profit, but it helps me to see where the problem was and what to do about it.And I am commited to my customers.
Once fixed they stay fixed.
The long term reliabilty is exceptional , and apart from tubes there's nothing in the pre that is going to be tired in 20 years time, as is the case with most commercial pres stuffed full of 85 degree rating electrolytics with 10,000 hour lifetimes.
There are now over 150 Supratek preamps worldwide. The most rewarding and gratifying thing for me has been the enjoyment of the sound quality that 99% of the owners have conveyed to me.
They have slowly evolved to be even more musical than the first versions which were so well received.
While I'm here let me go over the gain issue which Jewel remarked on.
There have been 3 or 4 people who have had trouble with having very little volume movment with their pres.
This is because of the very high sensitivity of their power amps- typically power amps designed to use CD direct and with very high driver stage gain. As an example a high gain power amp would use a 12AX7 and a 12AU7 driver tube (well ,mine wouldn't, but it is typical)the 12AX7 has a gain of 100 , the 12AU7 15 giving a gain stage of 1500.
A customer reporting little volume control had a amp using a 5751 and a 6FQ7 . The 5751 has a gain of 70 and the 6FQ7 74 making a total gain of 5180! This is absurdly high and a pre would have to cut a CD signal significantly to attain normal levels. I consider these types of power amps to be more like integated amps than power amps.
The Supratek pres have high gain -it is partly the reason for their dynamics, but coupled with these high gain power amps you have a LOT of gain and the result is very little volume control and in the worst case tube hiss.
To overcome this I've started using a 6 way switch on the back panel which gives a 0 cut position and then 5 levels of increasing gain cut.
In addition there is set of switches internally that cuts the gain to less than unity (1) for these problem amps.
It is possible to find a "sweet spot" for every pre/power amp combination. This makes the pres even more versatile and it's fun finding this optimum position.
I'll disappear again but I would like to thank all the people who have purchsed Supratek preamps (and those patiently waiting). I have had fantastic response to my idea of how music should sound- the pres are different and I'm gratified I've found a common bond with so many people.
You can be sure that in twenty years time I'll still be here, and still loving what I'm doing.
MickM
