Line Stage Preamps that blew you away $2500 Edition

Incredible deal on the Zesto. Congratulations on finding one for so little. They make excellent products.

As far as new goes, the Black Ice Audio Fusion F360 is a great sounding tube line stage with some unique features. $2k retail.

Must check out Klaus' Odyssey Audio: Candela and Tempest, tubed & SS, Pres, respectively.

I picked up the Tempest a year ago ... couldn't recommend higher especially for the price!!

Recently added The Benchmark LA-4 with their DAC3 B, to my system, WOW, what an improvement. It almost seems as though, a new audio system was introduced to your ears. Robert TN

@gochurchgo

So tell me how it sounds. Super interested.

In short, it sounds great. Over a period of years, I went through many tubed and solid state preamps and finally ended up with a custom, unity-gain, McCormack TLC-1 that was modified by Steve McCormack at SMc audio about 5 years ago. Steve has told me "your preamp sounds very close to my VRE-1." It should, since it uses the exact same power supply, same Lundahl transformers, and same Shallco volume control as his first version VRE-1.

The ONLY shortcoming of my modified preamp is the absence of a remote volume control and display. Having a remote and display has become more important to me in recent years so with Steve’s help, I took the volume control out of the circuit by replacing it on the board with a pair of Audio Note silver tantalum resistors so I could use the preamp as a buffer in conjunction with a passive unit that has a remote and display.

That is how I became acquainted with Arek Kallas of Khozmo and Hattor. I had tried multiple passives and determined I liked the sound of the resistor units better than the transformer-based units. Khozmo offers a very nice passive with a large display and full-function remote so last year I purchased a dual-mono, balanced passive unit (picture on my system page) to pair with my buffer/preamp. More recently, I have thought about trying his larger Hattor preamp that also offers the option of an internal active stage using a choice of op amps. The goal would be to simplify and to remove the separate buffer and extra interconnects. Last weekend I inquired about having Arek make one for me and then the same day I emailed him the very type of unit I was inquiring about (with the NewClassD Dual Ultimate discrete op amps) came up for sale at USAM, so I purchased it.

I received the unit on Friday and I am in the process of comparing the Hattor with my Khozmo/SMc preamp/buffer combination, and also comparing the sound of the Khozmo with the Hattor, when both are used as a passive with the SMc buffer. I had chosen the Takman REY metal film resistors for my Khozmo passive unit and the Hatter preamp has the more expensive Amtrans AMRG carbon film resistors.

So far, my observations are that the Hattor with +3dB gain (through the internal op amps) sounds very close to the Hattor run passively through the much more expensive SMc buffer/preamp unit. I also believe that in my system, the Amtrans AMRG carbon film resistors sound slightly better than the Takman REY metal film resistors. Bottom line, if you want a full-function, solid state unit with remote and display, it may be hard to do better than the Khozmo for $2,500.

@mitch2  thanks. To your ears does the Hattie achieve that “band/artist in your room” sense of presence? Do you feel the sound has adequate weight and dimension?