Preamp Deal of the Century

Slowhand, the tubes have quiet down a lot since the first night. The noise was probably also in part due to the regulator tube not being seated properly. The norm setting with volume all the way up now seems to work for me too, thanks.
The soundstage has opened up quite a bit, and lifeless recordings now have a natural presence. I'll report back after 300 hours or so. Hard to imagine it will get better, and I'm still in the first 30 hours/stock tubes.
Also, a thanks to Jazzdude for taking the time to answer my questions when I was going through the purchasing decision. Boy, am I glad I did.

Can't say I have heard the Supratek with the Pass labs gear, but I would think it would sound great together. As for the theater pass through on the Cortese, Mick hand builds all preamps to your needs.

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Mhu,
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No Worries. Your Cabernet will get much, much better in the next 2-300 hours and then the NOS tubes will take it to yet another level.
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Prepare you drool bucket now while there is still time.
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Congratulations
Rgds, Larry
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I have the Cabernet for about five months now and yesterday I finally unplugged the 6f6g's and put in the 350B's. (I have been resisting the temptation until yesterday - after a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon^_^). The 350B's brought the sonic performance to another level, or I should say several levels up. Now I am wondering what would happen when the tubes arrive that magical 300-hour mark?

Cheers,
Kenji

Mhu - i'm really glad you like the cabernet so much. i would just leave it on and playing at low levels so you can rack up the burn-in time quickly. i got about 4500 hours on my cabernet and it sings like you wouldn't believe.

everyone - i am tweaking the system a bit. wrapping up a home audition of a dac. when i put my EVS dac back in the system i decided to place some EVS step attentuators on the outputs. don't know about others but my system is high-gain and i could never get the supratek volume above 30%. so i attentuated the source signal to the point that i could use most of the volume on the supratek. it just allows me to hear more of the cabernet in the system and less of the dac's outputs. boy is it ever smokin good now. this calls for some espolon anejo and an ashton vsg.

also noticed now that i can turn up the volume on the supratek that i can hear rfi from the supratek remote bleeding through the system. of course this only happens when i'm actually using the remote. so it isn't a cause for alarm just curiosity.