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Post by Deleted on Jul 25, 2018 23:33:08 GMT
Hi all,
Has anyone heard one of these?
An alarming number of knobs on the front puts me off initially, but I have a sneaking suspicion a valve pre may just be bliss with the Monarchy Audio SM-70.
Any opinion?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 25, 2018 23:49:12 GMT
Never heard the L2, but I do think the SM-70s may like a valve pre. They did not like my Rothwell passive.
Then again possibly it was my Audio Note Transport, Perpetual Technologies P3/Pa, Dac, Modright PSU, they did not like !!!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2018 7:48:29 GMT
Never heard the L2, but I do think the SM-70s may like a valve pre. They did not like my Rothwell passive. Then again possibly it was my Audio Note Transport, Perpetual Technologies P3/Pa, Dac, Modright PSU, they did not like !!! Lol, so you didn't get on with them then!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2018 9:55:45 GMT
Hi all, Has anyone heard one of these? An alarming number of knobs on the front puts me off initially, but I have a sneaking suspicion a valve pre may just be bliss with the Monarchy Audio SM-70. Any opinion? You're right. Valve pre-amps work very nicely with the Monarchy's. My VTL Deluxe sounded great with the SM-70. The VTL may be up for grabs soon by the way.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2018 10:21:35 GMT
Hi all, Has anyone heard one of these? An alarming number of knobs on the front puts me off initially, but I have a sneaking suspicion a valve pre may just be bliss with the Monarchy Audio SM-70. Any opinion? You're right. Valve pre-amps work very nicely with the Monarchy's. My VTL Deluxe sounded great with the SM-70. The VTL may be up for grabs soon by the way. Shall I just you all my money now Geoff šš
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Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2018 10:34:31 GMT
I just put a couple of piccies on AOS.
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Post by dsjr on Jul 26, 2018 10:47:22 GMT
For a couple of hundred, it's well worth a punt, especially as there are mods you can do to turn what I remember as a real softly-coloured sound into something possibly a bit more realistic. I saw one for sale a couple of years ago for over five hundred notes and by today's standards when you can get a Croft M25 new for not much more, no way Jose..... (HiFi Dave does help AOS members by the way, but I'm not shilling really...).
As I understand it, old fashioned valve poweramps usually needed the 'slower' and more band limited response of a valve preamp driver to prevent distortions creeping in due to a solid state preamp having often too wide a bandwidth.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2018 11:04:48 GMT
For a couple of hundred, it's well worth a punt, especially as there are mods you can do to turn what I remember as a real softly-coloured sound into something possibly a bit more realistic. I saw one for sale a couple of years ago for over five hundred notes and by today's standards when you can get a Croft M25 new for not much more, no way Jose..... (HiFi Dave does help AOS members by the way, but I'm not shilling really...).
As I understand it, old fashioned valve poweramps usually needed the 'slower' and more band limited response of a valve preamp driver to prevent distortions creeping in due to a solid state preamp having often too wide a bandwidth.
Hi Dave, What would recommend for the SM-70 & SM-70PRO'S in terms of a valve pre? I'm not sold on the VTL or the AIL2
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Post by dsjr on Jul 26, 2018 11:12:53 GMT
You know which one! Properly designed, properly and RELIABLY made, decent man who makes 'em and there's an upgrade path in terms of better supplies and so on (not in the Micro Basic he did a few years ago which was a bit of a scrappy thing). My pal can help a little, but it depends how much you wish to spend. Solid state and not always silly money - Quad 77. Great phono stage, very sweet and airy tone but balls with it - a clear step forward subjectively from the 66, 44 and 34 imo... What's this advice I keep trying to give myself, "Buy cheap, buy twice, or thrice, or more as you box swap yourself into oblivion and never make real progress... "
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Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2018 11:21:36 GMT
You know which one! Properly designed, properly and RELIABLY made, decent man who makes 'em and there's an upgrade path in terms of better supplies and so on (not in the Micro Basic he did a few years ago which was a bit of a scrappy thing). My pal can help a little, but it depends how much you wish to spend. Solid state and not always silly money - Quad 77. Great phono stage, very sweet and airy tone but balls with it - a clear step forward subjectively from the 66, 44 and 34 imo... What's this advice I keep trying to give myself, "Buy cheap, buy twice, or thrice, or more as you box swap yourself into oblivion and never make real progress... " You know what, Dave, I know a fella with a Croft 25 so I'll see if he's up for a visit with it and we will run the rule over it here. If it's as good as you say, I'll bloody buy one lol
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Post by Bigman80 on Jul 26, 2018 11:50:24 GMT
Hi all, Has anyone heard one of these? An alarming number of knobs on the front puts me off initially, but I have a sneaking suspicion a valve pre may just be bliss with the Monarchy Audio SM-70. Any opinion? I heard one but itās such a long time ago and not in my own system, so itās hard to be sure how good the L2 was. The overall sound was stellar as ever, but the dem room and supporting kit were top notch too. Iāve nev r heard a bad audio Innovations product, although they work best with the gear they were built around, such as Voyd and Snell.
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Post by Bigman80 on Jul 26, 2018 11:52:11 GMT
I should add that they tended to use cheap pots which you may not like the idea of. Trouble is, replacing them with ābetterā ones somehow loses the magic. On that I do speak from experience.
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Post by Bigman80 on Jul 26, 2018 12:42:57 GMT
I must admit I know little or nothing of Croft preamps and their relative places in the hierarchy. I was shocked to find out the baby preamp is only Ā£350 new though: www.croftacoustics.co.uk/products.htmlWhat a bargain that is these days for a valve pre.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2018 13:32:13 GMT
I must admit I know little or nothing of Croft preamps and their relative places in the hierarchy. I was shocked to find out the baby preamp is only Ā£350 new though: www.croftacoustics.co.uk/products.htmlWhat a bargain that is these days for a valve pre. That is crackers!!! Must say the 25R does appeal. Bit chingy though. Have to keep my eyes on the used market for a cast off š
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Post by dsjr on Jul 26, 2018 14:47:33 GMT
The Micro Basic is now discontinued as Glenn couldn't make anything on them. Fodder for tight fisted forum posters though
The Micro 25 has been Ā£750 for nearly ten years now and sounds tons more refined and has been designed to get the best out of the stock valves he uses. The 'R' offers a little more behind the obvious and it creeps up on you and the 'RS' with built-in wasps nest ( ) a little more. The Micro 25 can be updated in these two upgrade stages later on. The main reason why I like the Croft preamps today is that the current ones barely show what's inside. What comes out is pretty much what goes in and in my opinion, with VERY little obvious change. The model I had from thirty years ago ('R' ancestor) was obviously 'sweeter' in tone and despite the inner clarity, too much added colour, like many ARC preamps do for thousands of pounds, let alone dollars! Driving several metres of good mic cable to my then active ATC 20 Pro's, it sounded thick and dull. Westie - liking a soft 'slugged' amp to drive screamingly 'sharp' speakers isn't really the way to go you know i didn't mind the 'First Audio' power amps with matching preamp, but almost everything else they made was soft and sugary to me. Reliability was Sh#t in the early days too due to bad construction decisions, which were sorted I believe.
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Post by Bigman80 on Jul 26, 2018 14:57:47 GMT
Thatās not a description I recognise of either Audio Innovations amps or Snell speakers. It matters not though, because together they made some of the best musical experiences I have ever heard, I donāt know if you ever tried the baby 300, but it was one of the most lively amps I ever owned. I ran it in an AB comparison with some big Exposures and it was tonally very similar, albeit a tad more āedge of the seatā. They would be a bargain used if it werenāt for the rarity of decent ECL86s.
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Post by dsjr on Jul 26, 2018 16:34:18 GMT
You mean the lozenge, ovoid shaped thing? Soft, soggy and lacking in dymanics... just like a smaller 500 as I recall... Not my scene at all in the vein of the MF A1
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Post by Bigman80 on Jul 26, 2018 16:42:39 GMT
You mean the lozenge, ovoid shaped thing? Soft, soggy and lacking in dymanics... just like a smaller 500 as I recall... Not my scene at all in the vein of the MF A1 No, it was the āhunchbackāone. Iāll grab a pic......
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Post by Bigman80 on Jul 26, 2018 16:45:18 GMT
This was the fella. They made a mk2 in a more conventional case, a right wee fire cracker if ever there was one.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2018 16:51:30 GMT
Quasimodo with knobs on..........
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Post by macca on Jul 26, 2018 17:09:17 GMT
I must admit I know little or nothing of Croft preamps and their relative places in the hierarchy. I was shocked to find out the baby preamp is only Ā£350 new though: www.croftacoustics.co.uk/products.htmlWhat a bargain that is these days for a valve pre. They went up to Ā£400 and then they were discontinued. I was told that Croft offered it pretty much at cost because he felt on principle that everyone should be able to afford a decent valve pre-amp. The dealer margin was barely a drink.
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Bigman80
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Post by Bigman80 on Jul 26, 2018 17:52:32 GMT
You have to respect that.
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Post by Bigman80 on Jul 26, 2018 17:59:28 GMT
Quasimodo with knobs on.......... A mate tested and serviced it for me and did me a kindness in replacing the pot with an Alps blue, it wrecked the sound and I had to ask him to put the old one back. It was apparently a cheap guitar pot but it sounded great, I read sometime later that there was good reasoning for using that pot, but I forget the logic now. I just trusted my ears, I only sold the 300 because valves were hard to get.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 26, 2018 22:25:52 GMT
I've had that myself. A cheap pot sounding better than a 'posh' one. One of Hi-Fi's mysteries.
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Post by dsjr on Jul 27, 2018 8:18:18 GMT
Yet when a certain company does this, it's taken the piss out of.. Croft does the same, but it may be for him that more expensive pots aren't worth the extra rather than being 'worse.'
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Bigman80
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Post by Bigman80 on Jul 27, 2018 8:53:35 GMT
Yet when a certain company does this, it's taken the piss out of.. Croft does the same, but it may be for him that more expensive pots aren't worth the extra rather than being 'worse.' The cheap pot in the NVA amps was mentioned here by me. If you recall, it was in response to you citing a Ā£6 bass unit (trade price in the 1980s) in the SBL as a reason for it being no good. My point was to show that you canāt assume anything by quoting a price. Anyone wishing to check this can look back. The posts are still here. I still have a spare Omeg pot in my tool kit. Dorothea Mackeller biographyI certainly donāt and wonāt take the piss out of the choice of pot. Itās a great sounding pot and I have said so consistently. Iāve been even built a couple of passives for mates unsig it and also said that here. Personally, I wouldnāt pay retail for any passive when I can make one for peanuts, but others can make their own choices on that, Same goes for the Audio Innovations guitar pot. Apparently they were 75p each in bulk. The NVA is Ā£1 approx. Both work well in their respective applications.
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Post by dsjr on Jul 27, 2018 9:52:48 GMT
It's a good bit more now, even when bought in bulk.
By the way, a P20 isn't a rip off at Ā£100! No circuit board, pot and switch that do the job reliably for years. if you really do have a thing about these, the Schiit one is about as low as you could go I reckon for a commercial product and even pro 'Big Knob' types aren't particularly cheap for a pot, knob, little case and captive cables.
If you make your own, how long does it take to make up and how would you translate that into an hourly rate? Add the parts up including box or case, add labour and packaging to send out without it being bashed up and work out how much it would cost...
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Post by Bigman80 on Jul 27, 2018 10:46:35 GMT
A DIY passive? Probably around Ā£20 inc case and a couple of hours labour if youāre slow. As I donāt pay myself, I count my time as free. Besides, itās fun! As I said, others can spend what they like, but Iād rather DIY a passive in the same way I would rather make cables. A monkey could do it, which is good because if itās was any more taxing, Iād be paying for ready made stuff myself As for the Ā£1 pot, Iām only citing RD just a few days ago. Maybe he found a cheaper supplier. Itās this touchiness whenever anyoneās mentions NVA that I find frustrating. Unless youāre licking the makers arse and fawning all over the products, there seems to be a problem every time. No wonder the stuff gets banned from mention. If it canāt be be discussed in the same way as say, Naim, then whatās the point?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2018 10:58:03 GMT
I'm looking at building another pre, just for fun this time, bit of practice.
Valve buffer this time, cheapy pot and selector switch.
I was thinking of a Tocos pot, but I might chuck one of these in instead.
Any cheap selector switch recommendations?
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Post by Deleted on Jul 27, 2018 11:02:45 GMT
It's a good bit more now, even when bought in bulk. By the way, a P20 isn't a rip off at Ā£100! br] Who said Ā£100 was a rip off Dave? Looking at the standard passive you can get out there, there's no reason to suggest that. Looks a decent price for a new unit that doesn't have reason to breakdown for many years, if ever! I paid similar to that fory first passive pre although the Alps blue it had was a bit more than the NVA pot.
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