Juicy Music Blueberry vs Audio Research LS26 or ?

Take a look at Space Tech Labs in Canada, Albert the owner has about a million combo's of preamps that he will build custom for you to fit your system and musical tastes. There have been plenty of people who have sold their mega buck pre's to buy his because of how good they are, not regarding how cheap they are.

I'm running the pimped out 6H30 'DR' tubes. These are as good as it gets from what I can tell... The 6h30 tube does not have a deep NOS bench from which to choose. When I switched from the stock Sovteks to the DR version, the noise issue was about the same, but I found the DR's to be a little warmer, with no loss in detail.
I guess I'll have to be sure to get an in-home audition for whatever I choose, since I would honestly rather have the noise with beautiful music than noise-free sterility.

What kind of noise are you experiencing? Tube rush? Hiss? Hum?

I owned a Juicy Music Peach, and I thought it performed WAY beyond it's price point. Fun? You bet.

My hunch is you may find a quieter preamp, but you also may lose the fun factor and regret selling the Blueberry.

FWIW, I once ran a Moscode 401HR with a Lamm LL2 Deluxe with excellent results. However, the Lamm had it's own noise issues.

For a short time, I owned both a Lamm LL2 Deluxe and the Peach (driving Pass Labs XA-60.5 amplifiers), and the Lamm was only slightly better (deeper, more meaty lower mids and bass...but not by much).

If you want dead quiet and exciting to listen to have a look at the Audio Horizons TP 2.1 tube line stage.Take a moment and scroll thru the thread on this forum.

I just had an MC installed in an original blueberry by Mark. The previous owner got rid of it because of some noise he was experiencing in his system -- I've only had it for about a month. I replaced the tubes (with cheap, stock tubes) and that solved the problem. From my perspective, it was simply a noisy tube.

Mark told me if you change the tubes on a Blueberry you have to have them tested for Low Noise output. In his words, the Blueberry is "merciless" on noisy or humming tubes. I'm no audio expert, but what makes the Blueberry excellent for the value and such a great pre-amp is also its biggest flaw - you're going to hear it if something is off because it's way more sensitive than most pre-amps at that price.

I know that this doesn't answer your question but it's interesting because I've heard this complaint before but I haven't experienced had any issues with this yet.

My .02 is to check the tubes for noise and keep the amp.