Preamp Deal of the Century

The preamp comes in single ended ONLY! However Mick will agree to providing XLR outputs (whether it is truly balanced output I do not know - and doubt it). In my experience, Mick does not know which XLR connectors should be used on the OUTPUT side because in my two preamps (and a friends) Mick used the INPUT side connectors as the output...

In my experience ARC preamps are not the be-all end-all of tube equipment in general - (the amps are better than their preamps though). Their preamps are very thin sounding, sterile and can be down right schreechy!

The Supratek shouldn't even be looked at side by side with ARC gear. Yes - it will work well with your ARC amps (or any amp) but... as for preamps, the Supratek has the correct harmonics, tonal balance, and spatial characteristics that a preamp should have (and ARC lacks).

If you like ARC preamps - no-one is going to be able to tell you what you should or should not do because you have already developed your own bias. But given the price of the Supratek, you could very easily give it a try and see fist hand how this single piece of equipment can open new doors and take your system to an entirely new level of performance.

I don't even want to talk about BAT preamps vs. Supratek.

Bwhite, again thanks for the advice, hopefully Mick will not be upset with me for cancelling the pass thru.
With the remote control, Mick said that he is still not sure which remote he will use due to the fact that he was not happy with the last one he used. He assured me though that by the time he gets to start working on my preamp he already have made his decision on which remote to use.

Rmml, Hopefully by then, I will have had the new remote control installed in my Supratek. Like I said the source of the PC board is a company in Italy - it appears to be the best board available. Once we install and test Mick will find out (since he's paying). I'm sure he will implement the best solution.

If you really want to integrate the Supratek with your home theater, it works well to just run the processor outputs to a set of the Supratek inputs. This is what I have been doing and it works fine. Initially I thought it would be inconvenient but it really doesn't matter since in this configuration the processor is what adjusts the gain - not the Supratek.

BWhite is right, it is best to order the Supratek stock. Mick is a purist and as such he believes that the more "options" the more the possiblity of degrading the sound. I did not get a remote control on mine, but I did get the XLR's and they work fine. I also got 1 pr. of single ended outputs. Mick said that he had put on the wrong XLR's on a previous preamp, but he assured me that this problem had been corrected. Mine are the correct ones and they work great. Mick was putting a high/low gain switch on the preamp for the line stage because it has a lot of gain (possibly too much for some amps), but he is no longer doing this as the new parafeed design which he started producing with my unit does not need it. It is obvious to me that Mick is always working to improve the sound of the preamp. Mine was supposed to take 3 weeks to finish, but ended up taking close to 12 weeks, because he was working on a new design for the phono stage. The wait may be frustrating, but you will be rewarded with a work of art that is both beautiful to look at and to listen to.