Excellent comments by the others.
A caveat regarding the possibility you mentioned of combining a CJ ET3 with the VAC amps. Like many CJ preamps the ET3 has very high line stage gain, 25 db in this case. My perception has been that the unspecified gain of my VAC 70/70 is also somewhat high, especially in its zero feedback setting which I and most others seem to prefer (although that will be speaker-dependent). And I would presume the 30/70 is similar in that respect. While I suspect that the resulting overall gain would be ok with your vinyl source and 87 db speakers, you mentioned that you are considering eventually adding a digital source, and upgrading your speakers. The combination of a digital source, higher efficiency speakers, and the high gains of those two components would be likely to result in having to use the volume control on the CJ preamp undesirably close to the bottom of its range.
I’ll mention also that for a few years I used a Classe CP-60 solid state line stage preamp with my VAC 70/70, and I was happy with the combo. I purchased the CP-60 here in 2008 for only $1350.
Good luck. Regards,
-- Al
A caveat regarding the possibility you mentioned of combining a CJ ET3 with the VAC amps. Like many CJ preamps the ET3 has very high line stage gain, 25 db in this case. My perception has been that the unspecified gain of my VAC 70/70 is also somewhat high, especially in its zero feedback setting which I and most others seem to prefer (although that will be speaker-dependent). And I would presume the 30/70 is similar in that respect. While I suspect that the resulting overall gain would be ok with your vinyl source and 87 db speakers, you mentioned that you are considering eventually adding a digital source, and upgrading your speakers. The combination of a digital source, higher efficiency speakers, and the high gains of those two components would be likely to result in having to use the volume control on the CJ preamp undesirably close to the bottom of its range.
I’ll mention also that for a few years I used a Classe CP-60 solid state line stage preamp with my VAC 70/70, and I was happy with the combo. I purchased the CP-60 here in 2008 for only $1350.
Good luck. Regards,
-- Al