Wadia 861 or keep Electrocompaniet mk2

If you are concerned about colorations introduced by your preamp, you might want to consider a good passive preamp such as a transformer or autoformer-based unit, or perhaps a very neutral active preamp without gain (e.g. Placette). These are discussed in Audiogon forums. BTW, internal switches in Wadia allow for reduction of its output voltage such that you can nearly always stay within a "low digital attenuation" range for your system.

No offense, and surprised no one has mentioned it--a bigger upgrade would be the 1300 upgrade to 51SE status

I have the 31SE, and feel it outperforms the 50SE (which i also borrowed).

Cheers,

KeithR

Interesting thread, as I'm going through a similar hand-wringing exercise now, owning a Wadia 830. Subaruguru - did you mean to say the EC has big bass? Also, which Wadia did you try out? Thanks

I would go with the Wadia direct to amp, sell the Electrocompaniet mk2, and use the money to modify the Wadia at Great Northern Sound.

If you can do an A/B listen, it may be worth a try before making such a big move.

I have a fairly modest system (Wadia Transport, Audio Research Amp, and VMPS RM 40 Speakers). Adding an Audio Research Pre-Amp only it took a few seconds to know the Pre-Amp had to go!

Good luck.