Markgarmaise, the Coincident is similar to what I manufacturer but my product uses custom wound transformers and chokes. In direct comparison, the custom wound parts are superior in resolution, detail, soundstage, bass and extension of high frequencies. So knowing how good the Coincident preamp is, my preamp should be superior but I have not done a direct side by side comparison to date.
Rgs92, to be honest, most manufacturers uses cheap parts in production. The smaller manufacturers tent to use better parts as we do not build multiple units every day. I am amazed at the poor parts quality and design from many of the mass produced products. For example, wires with low and high voltage run right next to each other, cheap metal for a chassis with no dampening material, caps, transformers, chokes and attenuators. This is the reason there are so many people offering upgrades or modifications these days. That being said, modifications are more than just swapping out parts. You have to know the product and listen to each upgrade to know how much each will change the sound. In my preamp, I use a transformer volume control. My designs does not use any resistors in the attenuator to degrade the sound and I do not use any caps in the signal path to degrade the sound. I have also found that many of the recommendations on parts swapping from Audiogon members are useless. There are many who feel the Dact attenuator is a very god sounding attenuator but in my comparisons it is average sounding and the resistors used in it are nothing special based on long term listening tests in the same unit, same system, etc. Unfortunately, all of this adds to the cost of building a unit that the mass produced companies cannot do.
Happy Listening.
