Good post @fleschler. Tim's U.S.A. doppelganger was Roger Modjeski of Music Reference and RAM Tubes. Roger argued that the use of costly boutique parts was often unnecessary, as their claimed superior involved matters unrelated to the part's function in a particular circuit application, and therefore provided no sonic benefit. He further argued that some boutique parts actually compromise a circuit's behavior, leading to not just inferior sound quality, but in some cases reliability problems. Music Reference products are known for their superior stability and reliability.
And a second on Paravini's EAR tube pre-amps: After auditioning the EAR 912 pre-amp, Art Dudley stated in his Stereophile review that it was the first pre-amp he had heard which challenged the sound of his Shindo. The 912 was out of his reach (mine too ;-), but the excellent 868 is an over-looked nice little pre. Single-ended and true balanced outputs (two stereo pair of each, the latter via Tim's world-famous transformers), able to drive a 200 ohm load!
