2. amps-preamps
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Primaluna?

I’m thinking about giving a full tube setup a go and Primaluna in particular.  Looking to hear people’s experiences with Primaluna in general. My main draw to them outside of tubes is there auto bias and protective features.  Wondering if people generally replace a single bad tube or if people are replacing all tubes of that type when there’s a failure.  Also would be interested if there were any other companies with at least a similar protective feature. The auto bias sounds great but the protective features are a bigger deal to me.  

brylandgoodman
ghdprentice
6,423 posts
 

It does depend on what you are looking for. Good solid performance for the money (PL great), or state of the art… ARC, VAC, CJ, or there are mid tier solutions.

bigkidz
3,324 posts
 

Auto bias is a nice feature but adds another thing into the design.  Biasing is usually as simple as turning a knob and centering the needle in the middle of the meter.

rickallen81
65 posts
 

I had a Primaluna Dialogue Premium Integrated for a number of years. Really satisfying in late night listening but as some mentioned it did have limitations on headroom. 
 

also I had a number of problems with Upscale Audio tubes. I got bad input tubes at least three times and they refused to do anything about it and just said our testing is sufficient. So not a great experience on customer service for tubes. 

I eventually auditioned an LTA integrated and was blown away at the comparison between the two in terms of how much of a veil came off the music with the LTA that the Primaluna had. Maybe the auto bias, maybe the design, maybe the tubes, who knows but it was undeniably better with the LTA. 

secretguy
1,591 posts
 

Better than Raven. :)

arthur1260
38 posts
 

I have an Evo400i, I immediately replaced the stock tubes with NOS Philips EL34. I got a matched set of 2x4 for around $1200. After a few weeks one tube blew. I got worried so I took the bottom of the amp off and measured the voltages for each tube, all good. I also admired the wiring. I got another NOS EL34, replaced only the bad one, works amazingly. Then another tube blew, so I got again only one replacement. The good thing with auto bias is that you can do this plug and play, and it works perfectly. Imagine replacing a whole set of 8xNOS tubes every time on blows. These tubes have been manufactured in the 70’s, it’s quite usual to have some blow. And while waiting for the replacement NOS I plugged back the original PL tube, worked perfectly…

It’s been running on average 4 hours/day since almost 1 year, I can highly recommend it. Sound quality is awesome, but it depends a lot on your sources, speakers materials and cables. 
I’m looking to get a Decware at some point, and I think PL will have a very good resale value in case the Zen sounds indeed better:)

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