Sonic Frontiers Line 2 or 1 compared to new SE

Garfish, the local dealer in my home town has informed me that the SE versions are much better than the normal versions of line 1 and 2. I would also play around with NOS tubes in the meantime. I did the same thing here with the NOS tubes I got... I keep going back to the stock Electo-Harmonix tubes. Although I did leave those new Mullard CV4004's in there! If you have 12AX7's in there I would definitely listen to them. I got mine at www.kcanostubes.com

Hi Garfish:

I've been a Sonic and Anthem dealer for some years now and am proud to tell you that I helped author the SE versions back in early '99. It all started with a few mods I'd requested from Chris Johnson, President of the company, and slowly snowballed from there. I was so thrilled with the outcome that I nearly begged him to offer either an 'SE' or 'Signature' version at some point. I sold a few of these to clients before an official nomenclature was added and they were thrilled! I think that persuaded Chris it was a good idea. BTW, the pre-'SE' owners are still loving their pre-amps today! While I've heard all three of the SE pre-amps, I'm only intimately familiar with the 3. I contend that it is one of the finest pre-amps available today for under $10,000. The SE's are faster, much more liquid and musical than their counterparts, have better extension top and bottom, better decay, a more solid soundstage image and a weightier and more tuneful bass. I had a full compliment of Seimans put in mine, which I prefered to the stock Sovteks. While I would certainly suggest you do the upgrade, I would more adamantly suggest you get yourself a Line 3 first and then upgrade that when you can. You can contact me on this if you'd like.

Sincerely,
Mario

Garfish, I own a Line 1 SE. Kevin Deal at Upscale Audio gave me a great price and I love the unit. I think the 3 matched sets of Siemens tubes alone is worth the increase in price over the Line 1 standard. But there are numerous other serious parts uprgades too.
I don't know how much SF is asking for the upgrade, but it may be smarter to put the Line 2 up in a classified and at a high amount. See what you can get, because the going rate on a new Line 1 SE version will astound you. I can't believe the difference between a Line 1 and Line 2 is significant enough to consider a Line 2 SE. And I'll bet you can get pretty close to the amount needed for a new Line 1 SE from the classified.

Mario,

What are the differences between the SE and regular versions of the Line 3?
thanks
Rich