Upgrading from Primaluna


Recently went down the front end upgrade path and am running a nice table and phono now. I'm curious as to what the weaker link in my system is between my Primaluna Dialogue Premium Preamp and my Dialogue Premium Hp Power Amp. I'm considering swapping out the amp to a Ps Audio BHK250 for the summer to avoid heat, but am curious if I would be better off dealing with the heat and moving up to say an Allnic L-7000/Arc Ref 3 for the Pre. I'm happy with tubes on the front end, but curious if I'm running out of gas with 88DB efficient speakers and a single chassis tube amp. Which amp would you upgrade first and what benefits would you expect?

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Showing 1 response by jbhiller

I modded a PL Dialogue HP before.  I found the two coupling caps (as shown in Margu's photo they are the black VCaps) make the most improvement and are coincidentally the easiest to swap out.  These are directly in the signal path. 

While I ended up doing a full recap, (even more than Margus did), I found the others didn't make a significant difference.  Before doing the caps on the power tubes, I'd even try the two films linked on the massive Nichicon electrolytic that smooth out the power supply. 

All that said, modifying the Primaluna did make it sound better but it didn't make me love it more so I sold it.