Modwright LS 36.5 or BAT VK-51SE

Please consider that the XO.2 has a decent resale value, so moving to either the BAT, MW or Dude won't cost me much out of pocket once the XO.2 is sold.

Onward ho, Roor!

Roor- When you gonna upgrade those speakers? I'd do that before anything else.

As far as the preamp goes. I've got a Modwright SWL 9.0 and absolutely love it with my Pass Labs amp. Mine is the model below the 36.5 you are considering. I enjoy the flexibility to roll tubes and the weight and body it adds is superb.

Erndog: Yes, I want to upgrade speakers as well, and am negotiating on a pair of preowned Daedalus Ulysses.

Tvad: Pauls's response regarding the balanced option and impedance was

"No, I've never heard a line transformer that I liked, even spent lots of money trying to get some made. We use a resistor pull-down xlr. I think we've sold a Dude to a Pass owner, what's the input impedance? Dude is happy with 25K or more load. Lower, there might be some bandwidth loss, might be more of a situation on paper than in actual use, though. Thanks,Paul"

The input impedance on my XA-60.5's is 30k balanced and 15k unbalanced?

I'm not certain these will be compatible? Any thoughts, as I don't know much about impedance and proper matching?

Will I be ok if I used the balanced input on my amps connected with a resistor pull down xlr on the dude?

Thanks,

Greg

Roor, since the output impedance spec of the Dude is not provided, it seems to be a situation where you'd have to hear the preamp in your system to decide if it matches or not. You'd want to be listening for rolled-off highs. I don't know what a resistor pull-down XLR is.

The BAT VK-51SE was tested by Stereophile, and the output impedance was measured at 410 ohms (200 ohms spec'd by BAT), and rising to 4700 ohms at 20K. John Atkinson writes:

"This will not be an issue with components having high input impedances, such as BAT's own power amplifiers, but it does mean prematurely rolled-off low frequencies with low load impedances (fig.1), such as those offered by some solid-state amplifiers."

The measurements are here.

The Modwright preamp has a factory spec'd output impedance of 110 ohms, which is quite low. However, it has not been measured by Stereophile, so the question of how high the output impedance rises into high frequencies is unknown.