Preamp Deal of the Century

Curriemt, looks like what you experienced is accurately described as a microphonic Cortese. Not sure what vintage yours was but mine was built in late 2002. It was rock solid. Even heavy thumps on the chassis wouldn't cause any problems.. and that's saying something considering I was using tubes from 1940.

My previous Suprateks (Chardonnay/Syrah) had issues caused by just lightly touching the chassis. It made piano sounding noises.

FYI - You are correct, the Janus problems have been fixed - I believe current models have fewer tubes in the circuit and unfortunately don't sound quite as good as the older unreliable Janus.

Steve, come on... please! The Supratek's are NOT "high resolution" preamps capable of reproducing low level detail beyond what (almost) any decent (non-metalic or ceramic) speaker is capable of.

Personally, metallic and ceramic drivers are not my cup of tea. I cannot listen to them because they introduce a non-natural hardness to the music - I guess that can be perceived as "inner detail". If we assume that these types of transducers "bring out the detail" of the Supratek, I would have to disagree and suggest that they create an illusion of air and inner-detail because of their ringing, metallic composition.

Also remember there is a pair of interconnects, an amplifier and a pair of speaker cables between the Supratek and the speakers.

In order to really hear what a Supratek does you have to remove it from your system.

Get a record that starts off slow & quiet. Use Bolero or something like that.. then run your source directly to your amp and then tell me what you hear.... I am sure that will end the discussion about the Supratek's inner detail.

You may end up sending your preamp back to Mick.

Bwhite, I do not know what the vintage of my Cortese was, as I was the second owner. If I had to guess, I would say mid-2003. I suppose that I should have qualified my statements by saying that MY Cortese had these problems rather than generalizing.

As for the Janus, I have one of the earliest ones and have had no problems whatever. What evidence do you have that the later units do not sound as good as the earlier? FWIW, my experience doesn't match that. An audio buddy has a new Janus that we have auditioned in my system. I cannot tell the difference, except that his is ever so slightly quieter in the phono stage.

I checked the date on the feedback from my Cortese's first owner. I was wrong...bought the preamp from him in early 2003 and he said that had had it for about 8 months, so build date was early-mid 2002. Sorry about that.

Curriemt, sorry about your Cortese. There is not much I can do to help. From my experience, the Cortese is a much more solid unit and exhibits zero microphonics.

I respect Aesthetix. The IO Sig was my favorite phono stage of all I've owned. If you want my comments about the Janus please email me directly instead of in this forum.