What preamp for my Shahinians?

Have to agree with Jond. 6k would get you some great gear.

Years ago I auditioned a Cary pre & the salesman had it hooked to some Cary amps. When he came back in the room after awhile & asked me how it sounded I told him it was fantastic but he was "cheating" by using the Cary amps-way better than the Adcom I had. He switched to a Rotel amp & the soundstage collapsed, the sweetness all but disappeared...what I'm getting at is the Shahinian's will sound way better on better electronics.

I had some Shahinian's about 20 years ago & thought they were great. Would love to hear some on my Pass/Ayre gear now.

Of course, it depends on what you are seeking, but based on what you said about the Hovland, have you considered the Placette Active line stage? I believe there's a used one still for sale on agon for $3500 or new at $5000. The detail, dynamics, transparency, and resolution are supposedly second to none.

And the fact that you have the Rotel amp, which is known to be a very nice amp, yet a bit on the warm/dark side of life, the Placette could be the perfect compliment.

-IMO

Perhaps worth mentioning here that Peter Thompson voices his Plinius designs with Diapasons. So a CD-LAD and maybe even a SA-250 would seem worth a listen.

Supratek Cortese

I bought my Diapasons a year ago and started to drive them with a McIntosh MA6500 integrated amp, already to good results. Later, I had the new McIntosh C 2200 tube preamp, which was excellent in giving more and preciser soundstage, more natural sounding voices, better defined pop music, you name it. After that, I compared it to a C42 and C200 preamp. The C200 is even better than the C 2200, especially if you do not listen only to classical music, but dynamic pop music as well.
At a dealer's premises, I compared the preamp part of my own MA6500, the C2200, and the C200, running them with the amplifier part of the MA6500, and with a MC352 power amp. I found that the differences between the preamps were much greater than between the power amps. So I bought a C200, and the results are amazing. Given the fact that the C2200 costs 4500 $, and the C200 $ 6000 or more, the 2200 certainly is the better bargain. You should already be able to find one on Audiogon, I think. The Macs and the Diapasons work excellently with LAT International interconnects and speaker cables.