Jerome...are you making any headway on your phono preamp research/auditions? Curious if you have narrowed down the field at all.

Hi Cyril,

I am supposed to borrow the Linn Uphorik today. I will have it until next monday.
But Paris is under the snow and the trafic could be very difficult.
We'll see if I can get there....
Cheers

Jérôme.......I imagine Paris is beautiful when it snows.

:yes: Dan !

But trafic Jam is awful : we are getting more and more snow these last years, and colder winters. Paris will have to make some investments to accommodate this change. But the accounts are empty....

Global warming....

I recently befriended a Steelhead and had them connected to a pair of Krell KMA 160 amps.
Too bad I don't own a turntable, because when I was playing CDs through it... Heaven!
I paid half of new though, so that was sweet.... But..... The set is too big and may have to downsize...

Sound wise, with the Krells, it was like I was hugged by a blanket of beautiful sound....

I would love to have one of these.

I wonder how the Steelhead sounds compared to the 300B Neo Classic for a line input....:scratch2:

I had a Steelhead in my system for a long time. The stock tubes (Sovteks, if memory serves, for the 6922/6d8j) do it no favors in my book. I rolled a lot of tubes in it. I also experimented with the step-ups and the MM inputs and wound up preferring the MM inputs, both on a Lyra Titan i and later on the Airtight PC-1. I also preferred using it with an additional line stage (over most of its life, a Lamm L2) which gave it additional weight and palpability- it sounded more fleshed out. No doubt the bass, particularly with the Titan i, was spectacular and the highs very illuminated, but in my system, it sounded more 'hi fi' straight in. It might have to do with how the volume control and associated circuitry were implemented; to my ears, it sounded better bypassing all that, running it from the fixed, rather than variable outputs into a separate line stage and controlling the volume there.The unit was extremely well made, pretty easy to change out tubes, and support from Manley was second to none.

Wasatch, you can if you want to...