Preamp Deal of the Century

Hpdhondo, forget about the reading and get on with the listening. If you really want to know how to start with tubes it is only through the "experience". It's like a virgin reading or viewing pornography to experience a love relationship. There is no substitute for touchy feely contact.

Where did I start? When I first heard a high end tube system that touched my emotions, this after a long haitus from tubes. I haven't looked back since.

Hpdhondo, I would not worry about getting into tubes because, in my opinion, it's not that big a deal. I have been using tube preamps for twenty years and have never had any problems with them. You may need to replace the tubes occasionally. I have used tube amps for 15 years and have had a tube blow or become noisy a few times and replacing the tube solved the problem. Tube amps require more fiddeling if you have to reset the bias periodically, but tube preamps only require fresh tubes occasionally. I know very little about their innerworkings, I just like the way they play music.

I have a Syrah also; it's a very nice preamp. If you can, go for it.

Thanks for the responses. I hated to put it in here, but like I said I got caught up in this thread. I have never had the oportunity to listen to a tube system but can almost hear the great music just from the reviews. If I can't find a system to hear, I may just take the leap anyway. It sounds like, if I bought the syrah, I would have plenty of time to save the money anyway : )

bwhite, what going on with your system!!?

Hi Asa, Well... for the past several months I've been all over the map with audio. The introduction of a turntable has been very, very interesting... In fact, after owning many of the top digital players, I no longer have a CD player at all and I am totally 100% okay with it. I was fooling myself with digital, throwing as much money at it as possible with cords, interconnects, etc. With the turntable, it took 3 seconds to realize how wasteful the pursuit of digital perfection truly was.

That said, I still have my Chardonnay and using a simple Black Cube phono stage into the Chardonnay with a Linn LP12 & Shelter 901 - it beats ANY CD player I have ever listened to by an enormous margin.

I am ordering a Cortese from Mick in the next few days and building a custom Teres.