VTL, CTC, Lamm, ARC, EAR, Halcro, Mark Levison

There will probably be no more Blowtorches, I'm afraid, due to the untimely death of Bob Crump. There may be a worthy heir to that mantle, though. If it's pure sonics and musicality you're after in a feature-free line stage, the Tom Evans Audio Design Vibe with the Pulse PSU upgrade ought to be considered. I just got a used one, and it's blowing my mind.

David,

For a quick look at the Tom Evans Vibe, check Jeff Day's preview on 6moons: http://www.6moons.com/audioreviews/tomevans2/vibe.html. He will have a full review coming up soon.

The Vibe is not the preamp to buy if you want something that looks the part. It's a very lightweight unit, with its plain black plastic case and plain black plastic knobs. Even the outboard 2-piece PSU won't attract any attention. No milled faceplate, no casework machined from a solid ingot of aluminum, no 20 kg control unit and 20 kg PSU. It will not impress anyone. Not till you turn it on, anyway.

The magic is all inside, in Tom Evans' ultra-low-noise voltage regulator design, in the use of current instead of voltage feedback, in the parts selection (DACT attenuator and WASP selector switch) and in the design of the two-stage outboard power supply that smooths and regulates the DC twice before it even hits the magic regulator in the control unit.

It's simultaneously the most musically intense and sonically revealing preamp I've heard so far. This includes things like the Canary CA-801, a two-box Audion and the Bent Audio transformer passive. I haven't heard the other heavy hitters being discussed in this thread, but this tube-head finds the Vibe impossible to shut off.

Compared to some of the other units under discussion here, its price of $8600 USD is attractive as well.

Tom Evans is doing some of the more original audio R&D that I'm aware of these days. His Linear A amp uses parallel EL84 tubes driven by op amps (!) to create what he characterizes as a super-triode sound - the tonal qualities of of a 10 tube but with power, extension and dynamics. These are the claims, anyway - I'll know by the end of next week when my amp arrives.