Preamp Deal of the Century

i have been reading this thread with interest. i have a custom made pair of speakers made by war audio in perth, western australia. actually i live 20minutes from mick. what you have to consider is that mick custom makes his products and it is always going to take a while to get your products.

my speakers took 4 months to complete, but gee the wait was certainly worth it. check out the war audio website.

i have heard that mick's products are excellent.

regards

rod gittos

There has been a lot of talk about tube rolling in the line stage and power supply, but has anyone done any tube rolling in the phono stage of the Syrah preamp, and if so, what have your results been?

A couple of mods that I did on my Supratek Chardonay, courtesy of Bwhite's idea on how to reduce the vibration on your Supratek pre.

I posted pictures of it here with the Dynamat extreme on the inside of the pre.

The other one is the addition of the BDR cones and BDR "those things" I believe is what it's called. Here's a picture of it.

Here's a picture of my Chardonay after all this.

Thanks to Bwhite, now my unit sounds a lot more quiet and coherent.

Rmml - that's great! How does it sound??

I like the effects of the Dynamat and BDR stuff on my preamp however - I have noticed that too much BDR can be too much. The MkIV cones are certainly better for the Supratek than the MkIII. However, I am currently trying variations i.e. Two MkIV and a single MkIII on the preamp.

I find that too much MkIII can bbbbllluuuurrr things a bit in the mids.

Also in my system, adding Dynamat to the power supply is not an improvement. Neither are the BDR's of any type. The power supply sounds the best with the rubber/plastic feet removed, and resting on nothing but three tiny felt pads stuck to the underside of the frame (the wood part).

Also, I've found nothing better as a platform for the power supply than MDF (particle board). Sitting the power supply on carpet or even a super hard surface like granite made things mushy. For me, the MDF is the best.

I do have two Bybee filters in my power supply which may be removed soon. I recently tried power supply without the Bybees against mine and preferred the one without as it was more lively and extended.

I tripple bagged some "special" sand as I mentioned before and put it inside the "domes" on top of the Supratek. The SPECIAL-ness of the sand basically is nothing too special except I spent the good part of an hour combing out all iron from the sand with a magnet. The Iron has a ferroresonant effect on electronics and compresses the sound a bit. The sand (without the iron) adds mass to the Supratek and I believe it further enhances the sonics.

A quick note on the Bybee filters in the power supply.
This evening I auditioned my Supratek power supply against a friends side by side, on his Syrah. We both found mine to be compressed sounding and rather lifeless.

This is most likely a result of the two Bybee filters I have in the power supply. So.. since my friend is handy with a soldering iron, we removed to Bybee devices and discovered that my power supply sounded better than his! Ha! :)

His is new so its most likely still breaking in.

If any of you are considering the Bybee's - you might want to pass on the idea. From my findings, they certainly do not enhance Mick's design.