Pre-monitions

I have begun my search for a true stereo preamp. Until now I had been using my Denon AVR-1700 that has pre-outs as my preamp, and it just is not doing it. I have felt that the music coming out of it is sharper and more compressed than it should be. It is not really surprising that it does not shine as a preamp, it is built as a 5.1 surround receiver, and it has served me well, but I think it is time to find a true preamp.

This being the case my friend Ben and I headed out to the Hi-Fi stores. As i have mentioned before Ben has the ModWright SWL 2.0SE and he was gracious enough to bring it along with us to compare to what we found in the stores. We stopped first at the local VTL dealer to listen to the TL-2.5 tube line stage. It really sounded fantastic. It was very rich, very mellow sound with a lot of detail and flow. It did feel a bit strained however compared to the ModWright. The ModWright really felt more relaxed. I felt for some reason that the VTL was straining a bit at the music. I also really felt like the VTL had a bit more definition. On Mike Doughty's Madeline And Nine from Haughty Melodic I felt the backing vocals through the VTL were separated more from Mike Doughty's voice than they were with the ModWright, I felt the vocals on the ModWright were mixed together a bit more. We listened to a few more things and concluded that both had their strengths, and to me neither was the clear winner.

We then headed down to the Potbelly Sandwich Works for some lunch, and a discussion of what we had just heard.

After lunch we headed to our local Audio Research dealer to hear what they had to offer. We listened to the SP16. This one had a nice feature that it included a phono preamp. We listened to the same music we had with the VTL, again switching between the Audio Research and the ModWright. We both felt that the Audio Research was a bit dry, a bit flat, and overall less involving than the ModWright. We felt that the Audio Research did have a bit more bass extension than the ModWright, but the ModWright definitely drew us in more. The salesman we were working with then mentioned that they had a Classe CP-60 that was a trade-in that they had priced at $1800, and originally retailed for $3700. It is a solid state preamp, no tubes which is a departure from what I was planning to go with, but I figured I would give it a listen. It has an external power supply, a design feature of which I am a big fan. We gave it a listen and definitely liked it. It sounded very warm and natural for a solid state preamp. It had been sitting in their storage room, which is very cold, for about 6 months unused, so it had to warm up for a bit. After letting it play for a while we it sounded good, and the salesman said that letting it warm up for 24 hours would make it sound even better. We of course did not have time for that, but I could bring it home and do that with my system. I may do that, but after doing some online research I think the price that they are asking is a bit high for what it is worth.

So at this point I am thinking about the ModWright or the VTL. I liked them both a lot, and I did get to listen to Ben's ModWright in my system a little. I think next I need to bring home the VTL for a visit.