[prepress]

All right. I've been deliberating, kicking it around, and am not in a big hurry, but I've pretty much decided to go after the PC upgrade on my preamp. I could still be talked out of it so feel free to try, especially since I'm not in a huge hurry, what with other bills having inserted themselves just now.

I lean toward another Premium for completeness' sake; pre and power will thus match. I've been in e-mail dialog with the guys at Transparent once again, and that's helped push me in this direction. One of the techs there has a C500 preamp, and experimented with different PCs. What he got out of that was greater openness and impact, which is quite like my experience when I moved to the HPPC I have on my C2300 now (he also has a Mac amp). I don't imagine the change to a Premium would produce as dramatic a change as the HPPC did before mainly because there are Premiums on my amps already. When I put HPPCs on my amps after putting one on the preamp the improvement was not as profound.

If I get the Premium and the openness increases, that may bode ill for those bright-sounding CDs I like to play and now have to turn down the volume for with the Gold Lion tubes in the 2300. My answer would be to replace the Gold Lions with the warmer JJ High Performance Gold Pin tubes to offset/smooth out any significant increase in openness and transparency. To balance things out, in other words.

I'll need to clear a few bills first, but it's closing in on a done deal. Will report once I do it and spend some time with the new PC and possible tube swap.