Primaluna?


I’m thinking about giving a full tube setup a go and Primaluna in particular.  Looking to hear people’s experiences with Primaluna in general. My main draw to them outside of tubes is there auto bias and protective features.  Wondering if people generally replace a single bad tube or if people are replacing all tubes of that type when there’s a failure.  Also would be interested if there were any other companies with at least a similar protective feature. The auto bias sounds great but the protective features are a bigger deal to me.  

brylandgoodman

I loved my PLII, bought used.  First time with tubes  and it hooked me.  After a few years  i upgraded to a 4 watt Decware Mini Torii.  Primaluna is a great place to start and end and Kevin Deal was very helpful even though i bought used.

I as well had a PL bought used, had issues with it like noisy vol pot and tubes that went bad quickly. Sold it and went with an Atmasphere S30 that sonically was in another world. 

I’ve had a PL Prologue Classic integrated since 2019 and am thrilled with it! It has been my only tube amp and, like many others, I’m hooked now. I’ve sorta wished I’d have held out for one of the higher models that feature the bad tube indicators adjacent to individual tubes but it’s probably unneeded in the grand scheme of things — I’m learning, somewhat late I confess, that when one power tube goes bad it’s pretty much standard procedure to replace the whole set of four. I’ve had three quads of power tubes in my PL since purchasing it - the original PL supplied EL34s.  Sounded very good…in fact was what got me hooked on tubes. I replaced that quad, still working fine, with Gold Lion KT77s which did provide an extra measure of sound quality to my ears but one of them failed in less than a year (mixed reviews on reliability of those particular tubes) and the Prologue Classic handled it in stride. Just a muffled ‘bump’ noise and the single light on the faceplate lit up red and the amp appeared to be in protection mode. I put the original, PL EL34s back in and played it for awhile before replacing them with reissue Mullard EL34s which I’ve been enjoying for over a year now. Still very much a newbie to tube amps but that’s been my experience with PrimaLuna.

I have been a devotee of tube amplification for many decades. I have owned the prima Luna Dialogue Integrated for three years and it is the easiest to use and nicest sounding to my ears. I highly recommend this brand. You can spend a lot more money for probably not a big sonic improvement.