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If You Were A Swine Looking To Choose Between 3 Preamps...

Looking to make a choice for a pre to use with an H2O audio 250 Signature amp I recently acquired. The amp sounds lovely running off the tube stage of a Musical Fidelity NuVista integrated. On a lark I boght an Edge SI 1M pre amp to try with it. If this combo doesnt work out, then it gets paired with a First Watt F7 I have.

In that case I need to look at a different pre, and may go tube as the Nuvistor internals on the MF work well with this amp.

Being a pig of limited means I have looked at the used market and came up with 3 interesting choices.

Allnic L3000 MK II

Line Magnetic 512 CA( Japanese voltage)

Triode Corp Trv 4se

Any one of these have to be bought un-auditioned, as two are coming from Canada, one from New York.

Anyone have any insights of the 3 candidates?


neonknight
almarg's avatar
almarg
8,673 posts
 
Your amp has a very low specified input impedance of 8,000 ohms. Many tube-based preamps will not be able to drive such a low impedance with good results. I would expect that to certainly be the case with the TRV 4SE, which has a specified output impedance of 7,000 ohms, that might be even higher at some frequencies!

The Allnic would be fine in terms of impedance compatibility with the amp. Although you would want to verify that its relatively low input impedance (10K/20K unbalanced/balanced) would be a suitable load for your source component(s), especially if they are tube-based.

I couldn’t find an output impedance spec or measurement for the Line Magnetic, but I would have my doubts about how well it can drive 8K.

Good luck. Regards,
--Al
almarg's avatar
almarg
8,673 posts
 
P.S: I subsequently found the following output impedance spec for the Line Magnetic preamp:

Output impedance: 600kΩ balance output 600Ω (RCA)

The 600kΩ spec is nonsense, as the design wouldn’t work with that kind of output impedance. The 600Ω number is probably based on a mid-range frequency such as 1 kHz, but given that the preamp’s output is transformer coupled its output impedance probably doesn’t vary greatly at other frequencies (as it probably would if the output were capacitively coupled). So it **might** be marginally suitable for use with an 8K load.

Regards,
-- Al
steakster
720 posts
 
Being a pig of limited means I have looked at the used market
Are you saying that people who buy pre-owned merchandise are filthy, glutinous and reside in mudholes? What a strange thing to say.
bpoletti
1,004 posts
 
Swine - you don't mention price or budget.  A used Allnic will probably cost more than a new Herron Audio VTSP-360 and will likely NOT outperform the Herron.
dbphd
1,058 posts
 
almarg -  I appreciate your analytic advice.  I'm using Parasound JC 1 monoblocks (100 kΩ bal input) with a JC 2 BP preamp (60 Ω output). I'm trying to predict how well the JC 1s might pair with a Ayre KX-5 Twenty preamp, but Ayre doesn't include output impedance in the specs.  I'm currently using the Ayre preamp with a VX-5 Twenty (2MΩ bal input) stereo amp, but expect to consolidate two setups into one in the future.

db 
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