Preamp Deal of the Century

Six months is a long time IMHO. At some point, I would think that orders should be slowed, or buyers apprised, ahead of time, about length of wait. Basically, I'm glad people are getting a great product, that Mick is being rewarded for his work, but I know audiophiles are an antsy group when it comes to getting that next component. Would hate Mick's rep to suffer because he took on too much, no matter how well meaning...I've seen it happen before to some real nice guys...On the other hand, this is what happens when people BS'd over years find a great product, and, wonders of wonders, the new, small manufacturer doesn't let the small-fish-bowl notoriety go to his head and jack the prices up - which happens many many times. So, there's that too. Oh well, just have to wait I suppose.

Asa when I ordered mine I was told that it would be 3 months. To be honest I really didn't believe it as I expect that Mick is an optimist and I won't fault him for that. What I would fault him for is streamlining production at the expense of delivering less than the hand assembled product of legend lore per this thread. It has been 6 months which coincides with the time Streetdaddy ordered his, I sent out a check early October.

So if you're listening Mick, I'll not mind the wait but won't accept less than your best to date!

tubegroover... YOU SAID IT! i don't care if i have to wait 3 months, 6 months or a year! -- i just want to best he can do! so Mick, take your time and do your BEST! (my unit was ordered the third week of september, and is currently undergoing quality control... and boy am i excited!!)

Hey great, glad people aren't getting upset. I would feel the same if it was me, but, from a manufacturer's point of view - an expanding manufacturer - its important to keep in mind that there are all kinds of customers, and as volume increases, invariably, you encounter those who exepect ARC-type service.

Frankly, I think its the craftsman part of the equation that is the special part of this, and that is one of the things I respect Mick most for - as I do Jud Barber at Joule. Please understand that I did not mean to imply that less attention was the solution, or that a solution was even called for based upon the one comment above, only to remind that comunication on a product people are waiting months for from Australia with minimal US distributor support is important, and progressively so.

Tube and Dennis: I look forwards to your learned comments when yours come in.

I received my cortese linestage about 10 days ago. My cortese has one pair of RCA inputs and one pair balanced outputs, no source selector. Prior to the cortese I was connecting my DAC directly to my power amp. With the cortese, the noise floor of the recordings is not so apparent as it was in the no preamp config but all the detail is still there. One of the revelations of going to a no preamp config was that I found a song in my CD collection that has a very low-level of feedback in the recording that only lasted about a second. It frustrated me later, because at the the time I was so engrossed in the music that I forgot to make a note of the CD and track number, so I never could find the song title even though I went through my CD collection several times looking for the track. After I installed the cortese I happened to be playing the same CD in my jukebox player and listening from another room when I heard the feedback again. For the curious, the track is "simple faith" on CD "simple things" by chuck loeb. The feedback occurs on the left channel.

The first night the cortese was in my system I wept (literally, and I am a 6'5" former marine) with joy. I've had an occaisonal recording give me the chills before, but this was the first time I ever had one make me cry. The recording was "over the rainbow" performed by Kirk Whalum, it was the most beautiful sax and piano piece I had ever heard. At the time I was using stock tubes. Don't be misled by my previous statement and think the cortese is all syrupy and euphonic, because IMO the cortese leans slightly to the accurate and revealing side of things while maintaining a very natural presentation of the music.

In my system the cortese is extremely quiet with no self-noise or tube rush apparent at all. The only noise I ever heard was an occaisonal tic maybe once a day while my nos tubes were settling in. I have about 200 hours on the preamp right now. I wonder how long till breakin is complete? My current nos tubes are sylvania vt-231, rca 6l6gc, and sylvania 5ar4 (big bottle).