Hornshoppe "the Truth" preamp - any opinions?

@exdmd I actually ended up returning my truth preamp. After a few weeks of trying different inputs and I went back to my source driving the amps directly and ended up liking it better. In the end, I decided the money was better spent elsewhere. Ed was a great person to work with though. 

Haven't tried any other preamps, although I do look around periodically. I should reach out to the Denver audio community and see if anyone wants to do some gear auditioning so I can see if one would actually improve my system enough to be worth it...

I own The Truth and it is just fantastic. I does take a full week of playing 24/7 to break in and sound its best.  At first it was a tad closed in, overly warm and a little dull sounding. After some 150 hours of play time this unit has just amazed me.  So utterly balanced top to bottom with absolutely no glare or vestige of noise. 

My unit does not have a selector as I only use one input. I cannot stress enough or even overstate how revelatory this piece is. 

I have owned many top end active preamps costing up to $9000 new. I have built some great tube preamps and upgraded/modified quite a few good ones over the years. I have also owned the Placette, Lightspeed and Tortuga passives. These passives showed promise, but always left me wanting as they lacked body or meat on the bones weight. The Truth has all of it and is certainly the best Preamp have heard to date. 

Just be patient with break-in and enjoy.   Ed offers a trial period and the unit costs less than most high end cables :) 

grannyring - Do you plan on making any modifications? I'm pleased as punch with the stock T3 unit, but would be interested in learning about any further sonic improvements that could be made.

Well @thaluza that is a great question. It sure does not need any upgrades to please me, but every piece of gear I own has my signature somewhere in it.  Ha! 

Not much to do as the design is simple and so unique.  I plan to wire the input and output with Neotech silver/gold wire as I love the sound of it.  I will also upgrade the RCA jacks and IEC to Furutech. 

I will wire up the power supply with Duelund Polycast stranded and tinned copper wire. I plan to replace the eight 470uf 35v Nichicon HV caps with the wonderful Audio Note Kaisei. 

That would be it. Will it really improve on an already great unit? I think it will a bit.  The cost is reasonable. 

No rush.  I will enjoy it as is.  I will put some nice wooden knobs on the front to make it look high end 🙂

I’ve had "The Truth" in my system for a couple of months now driving a First Watt SIT 3 into Cube Nenuphars. I love it. It does everything and way more that I had hoped for. I have always sought a purist approach. I listen to 90% acoustic music, classical, jazz, bluegrass, folk. My electric music tastes run to Steely Dan or old Santana. Clean beautiful sounds. My system does not play grungy distortion well. The Truth is pure spring water. It’s quirky but brilliant.
The designer builder is Ed Schilling. I spoke with him extensively as he was building my preamp. He has very strong right wing views. He actually asked me if I wanted to cancel my order because of his beliefs. I live in Texas, these views are nothing foreign to me. I wouldn’t dream of throwing the baby out with the bath water by denying myself what is no doubt the best preamp for me because the guy who builds it has extreme views. I can’t afford the Bespoke Audio. I considered the Emia then went with Salvatore’s wisdom.
Schilling believes he has been blackballed by the audio media due to his beliefs. I guess this is possible but I think general acceptance of The Truth preamp has more to do with first its niche market as as a no gain pre and then its funky diy appearance. BTW Emia does the same thing. Ugly on the outside, superlative sound comes from the inside. Emia probably doesn’t sell a lot of finished autoformer preamps. I would guess Emia’s main income is from the diy community. Slagle has a cool factor that Schilling doesn’t seem interested in.
To wrap up, I think tribalism is a problem, not a solution. I believe we are all in this together and any solution that is a real solution has to include everyone as an equally valid voice. Condemning each other for opinion will never solve anything. Ed Schilling designed one of the worlds great audio solutions. If it were in a shiny box it could easy cost several times more. "The Truth" preamp is an integral part of my grail system.