Shindo Masseto

[PHC1]

The Masseto preamp has landed!

Unpacked the nice double box, unwrapped the Masseto (Matt packs them meticulously with clear wrap followed by bubble wrap and the gear sits in packing peanuts inside the box followed by outer box).

This Masseto has been gently preowned and enjoyed with a date of birth of 12/28/2008 according to the enclosed paperwork. Looks absolutely new. As I pulled the Masseto out of the box, the first thing that struck me is the rather significant difference in weight between the Masseto and Monbrison. Since they are virtually identical otherwise, I assume the amorphous-core step up transformers acount for the difference in weight.



From Stereophile:
Masseto is a full-function preamplifier, with line and phono stages under one roof. The Masseto goes a step further, providing a switchable choice between moving-magnet and moving-coil phono inputs, the latter accomplished with an onboard pair of amorphous-core step-up transformers.

Actually, the Masseto goes more than one step further. It begins by coddling the input signal with a Tocos (aka Tokyo Cosmos) carbon-comp volume control, and ends by buffering the line-level signal with a pair of custom-wound output transformers. (The Masseto's output impedance is a low 600 ohms—which compares favorably with the 5k ohm output impedance of the Shindo Aurieges.) The Masseto's dual-mono power supply is based on a pair of Philips 6X4WA rectifier tubes, the phono stage uses one Philips 6189W and one Philips 12AT7 per channel, and its line stage uses a single LCP86 triode/pentode per channel. (The LCP86 is a rare, Telefunken-specific variant of the PCL86 dual tube used in the Aurieges.) The two Telefunken tubes are mounted, House of Usher style, behind a small window on the panel, and are illuminated by a pair of green LEDs: a welcome touch of whimsy in a hobby often drained of same.

I did notice the Telefunken LCP86 tubes were leaning ever so slightly, probably started to work themselves loose from traveling across the country.

I took off the front face plate, made sure the tubes were nice and straight and sitting firmly in their sockets.

Hooked up the Masseto that took place of the Monbrison and am now warming everything up.

Stay tuned for imperssions.

This is my preamp and the photo is courtesy of Matt Rotunda.