Prima Luna Premium Pre

If I were going to buy their preamp I think I would instead just get their Integrated.

But why buy Chinese products at all when you have so many excellent choices? There are not many products today that a buyer can avoid made in china but high end audio is not one of them.

Hola Hiendmuse

You have a very good preamp. Yes Mystere is still happening and there are new designs that will come out. He wants to implement some new ideas on laddered resistor volume controls. Like yours has.

PrimaLuna caught on much faster than predicted, and there was some heavy engineering that went on to meet some goals that we had. It's more work than you would ever believe. And Herman van den Dungen, the owner of Durob Audio, is a little ummmm detail oriented.

One example was when they listened to different fuses. We all agreed on Littlefuse brand type 213, 218, and 219. He has the factory order them, but he was suspicious of their being genuine even though they were in official packing. Didn't matter a hoot. He took pictures of the end cap markings, sent them over here, then got in contact with a Littlefuse Product Engineer. They go back and forth, only to find out yes, they were the genuine article. While this is applaudable, it really slows things down.

So a lot of effort is being thrown at PrimaLuna. And in case you don't know, Herman is the man behind Kiseki phono cartridges. That's quite an undertaking.

Upscaleaudio, I'm happy to hear Mystere is still in business, thanks for your post. PrimaLuna has gotten a lot more coverage in reviews and advertising than Mystere. I hope Mystere experiences the same level of popularity as PrimaLuna.

Regarding your note about the Little fuse- the only change I made to my Mystere is to change the main fuse from stock to a HiFi Tuning Supreme fuse, which has definitely improved performance with better transparency, tonality, etc. It's well worth the price. This fuse is directional and sounds better with the arrow facing the preamp than away from it.

I read about Herman developing the Kiseki cart from a recent review of it by Fremer in Stereophile. Sounds very interesting!

Thanks Hiendmuse

I assume that anybody on this thread has also seen the thread about the DiaLogue Premium vs the CJ ET3SE. There is a lot of info there. This thread was about the ProLogue Premium so I'll put this info to explain the difference between ProLogue and the more expensive DiaLogue.

At $2199, the ProLogue Premium has all the things you want in a tube preamps.

Dual mono design with no shared parts, included a huge toroidal power transformer for each channel which is why it weighs in at 37.5 lbs.

It's tube rectified so it's PURE tube with two 5AR4's rectifiers, one for each channel. Point to point wiring. No printed circuit boards in the signal path.

SuperQuiet inputs using high quality Fujitsu Japanese relays for input selection instead of a selector switch which invites noise and will deteriorate over time.

The volume control is an Alps Blue Velvet motorized pot, not a push button chip.

The DiaLogue Premium at $3199 has larger transformers so it weighs 52.9lbs. It uses Swiss made silver plated OFC wiring in the signal path. High end audiophile Takman resistors. SCR Tinfoil caps made in France. One more input and a couple other minor things. The basic DNA is the same.

Both of them have 10-12 dB of gain so they don't have tube problems. The 12AU7 tubes are wired in parallel internally, then to each other. So if one tube goes sideways at 5000 hours the sound will not deteriorate much (smart thinking). I asked them to use 12AU7 tubes because there are more choices in 12AU7's both in current and new old stock than any other tube. NOS 12AX7's are expensive and hard to find now. 6H30's are only made in one factory, and I don't care for the sound of that tube much anyway. NOS 6922's are still around, but not as plentiful. I have 13,000 vintage 12AU7's in stock. It makes them cheap in comparison.