Steelhead as a preamp?

>>One other thing you might try: even though you may have a moving coil cartridge, use the moving magent output.<<

The Steelhead does not have a moving magnet output. It has 2 variable outputs and 1 fixed output.

It does, however, have 2 pair moving coil inputs, 1 pair moving magnet inputs, and 1 line input.

As Stringreen indicated, all connections are single ended. That being said, I've used the Steelhead with a handful of balanced linestages (using unbalanced inputs of course) with great results.

Dealer disclaimer

Audiofell

You are correct.That is what I meant. So sue me

I agree with Cohnaudio. I used to own the Steelhead. While using the XV-1S, it sounded much more transparent when you did NOT go through the transformers.

Bkonig or Cohnaudio~~Did it sound soft to you when running directly into the amps? Would this "softness" indicate some mismatch or is it inherent. Thanks again.

Rloggie, I owned the Steelhead for several years and, during that time, occasionally ran the Steelhead as a full-function preamp in addition to using it solely as a phono stage into a separate line-stage preamp. Whereas I regard the Steelhead as a world-class phono stage, I would characterize the line stage aspect of its performance as very competent but short of the performance of a SOTA line stage.

In my system, the Steelhead sounded more "tubey" than I prefer with bass that was a bit "wooly" and sound that was a bit less transparent and less extended at the frequency extremes than a first-class line stage.

So, in short, while I think the line stage in the Steelhead is very good, IMO you can improve on its performance significantly (and at significant cost) if you pair it with a first-class line stage.