3 Years ago I commisioned South Africa's Valve Audio to build me a no holds barred line stage specifically suited for use in avery high efficiency system.
After 3 years of development,this is what they came up with: The Valve Audio Revelation Line Amplifier
Wow...looks kinda like a Lyra Connoisseur. How does it sound? Since i suspect few of us have heard their stuff...comparisons to other brands would be useful. Thanks...and enjoy!!!
I have often thought of going with the lesser name brands...guys who can afford to put in super high quality parts without charging 5x for middle men, advertising, corporate overheads and the ultimate retail store markups...I almost went with Robert Koda's Takumi preamp. But the concern i had was repairs/support...guess that is a cost worth paying for too.
I cannot really say how this pre amp compares to the current cream of the crop as I have not listened to any of them. For many years I have been a happy user of the humble Lamm LL2.A little dark sounding with a somewhat narrow soundstage and not the last word in detail recreation the littlelist Lamm nevertheless pushed all the right musical buttons.
Whilst by no means essential for understanding or enjoying a musical event there is one aspect that, more than any other, creates goosebumps for me: That is the ability of a system to create the illusion of performers firmly grounded in 3 dimensional space. I first heard this long ago with a Conrad Johnson Premier 3 and have been doggedly pursuing it ever since. Although something like the earlier ARC pre amps I had would create a vaster soundstage with ostensibly better placement of performers in that space ,they could not quite recreate that reach out and touch feeling. The Lamm can do this. That is why I stuck with it
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This Valve Audio can do it in a manner reminiscent of the magic Premier 3 but it also adds a wide, deep fall through sound stage. It exchanges the dark sombreness of the Lamm’s tonality for an altogether sunnier disposition whilst having a silky smooth tonal balance with no harshness or electronic glare. I always felt that the Lamm had no real electronic sound but the VA shows it to have a little electronic edge in that darkness.
I have always laid the blame for an occasional tendency to plodding one note bass at the door of the McIntosh power amp driving my basshorns. However the VA pre amp improved the tunefulness of the bass whilst adding a solidity I always thought only possible with the big Krell amps I heard before.
I initially joined this forum for the Reel to Reel section. On the same day the VA pre arrived my little Studer A67 project came together. It is basically an A67 fitted with Nortronics heads wired directly into a heavily modified Bottlehead Eros . Much to my dismay this humble machine performed much better than my Mark Levinson ML5 master recorder pulling fine detail from mixes, throwing a huge soundstage with solid accurate bass response that the little Eros should simply not do. However by late Sunday evening I reconnected the ML5 and it simply and calmly in 5 notes re established its superiority with that huge, solid, almost calm reproduction so characteristic of the Studer Master Recorders. The improvement I heard with the A67(although it does sound fantastic) was more due to the pre amp than the source component.
Thanks to Saint Ki I finally have my Studer A 810 running again as well. Last night I listened to the Bill Evans Tape Project release on it: For the first time I could actually make out words uttered by the audience, rather than mere hum drum, the bar noises simply made more sense and I really wanted to get up and oil that squeaky door!
I cannot really say how this pre amp compares to the current cream of the crop as I have not listened to any of them. For many years I have been a happy user of the humble Lamm LL2.A little dark sounding with a somewhat narrow soundstage and not the last word in detail recreation the littlelist Lamm nevertheless pushed all the right musical buttons.
Whilst by no means essential for understanding or enjoying a musical event there is one aspect that, more than any other, creates goosebumps for me: That is the ability of a system to create the illusion of performers firmly grounded in 3 dimensional space. I first heard this long ago with a Conrad Johnson Premier 3 and have been doggedly pursuing it ever since. Although something like the earlier ARC pre amps I had would create a vaster soundstage with ostensibly better placement of performers in that space ,they could not quite recreate that reach out and touch feeling. The Lamm can do this. That is why I stuck with it
.
This Valve Audio can do it in a manner reminiscent of the magic Premier 3 but it also adds a wide, deep fall through sound stage. It exchanges the dark sombreness of the Lamm’s tonality for an altogether sunnier disposition whilst having a silky smooth tonal balance with no harshness or electronic glare. I always felt that the Lamm had no real electronic sound but the VA shows it to have a little electronic edge in that darkness.
I have always laid the blame for an occasional tendency to plodding one note bass at the door of the McIntosh power amp driving my basshorns. However the VA pre amp improved the tunefulness of the bass whilst adding a solidity I always thought only possible with the big Krell amps I heard before.
I initially joined this forum for the Reel to Reel section. On the same day the VA pre arrived my little Studer A67 project came together. It is basically an A67 fitted with Nortronics heads wired directly into a heavily modified Bottlehead Eros . Much to my dismay this humble machine performed much better than my Mark Levinson ML5 master recorder pulling fine detail from mixes, throwing a huge soundstage with solid accurate bass response that the little Eros should simply not do. However by late Sunday evening I reconnected the ML5 and it simply and calmly in 5 notes re established its superiority with that huge, solid, almost calm reproduction so characteristic of the Studer Master Recorders. The improvement I heard with the A67(although it does sound fantastic) was more due to the pre amp than the source component.
Thanks to Saint Ki I finally have my Studer A 810 running again as well. Last night I listened to the Bill Evans Tape Project release on it: For the first time I could actually make out words uttered by the audience, rather than mere hum drum, the bar noises simply made more sense and I really wanted to get up and oil that squeaky door!
There are a couple of guys here much more knowledgable about tape heads but recently Charlie King changed out my stock Technics heads for the Pro Nortronics and it's made all the difference in the world! Bass, transparency, extension at the frequency extremes and resolution that the stock heads only dreamed about. BTW, don't forget that the new heads will take some playing time to "wear" in. Give them 50 hrs or so. You might be surprised.
Maybe someday, you should figure out a way to give Charlie's King/Cello tape pre a listen I'm still waiting for Frederik to make my Dueland VSF Black caps for my King/Cello and hope they'll be ready in a couple more weeks. Patience isn't an audiophile's strong suit and it seems that the caps are made to order and it takes them 4-6 weeks to construct them
There are a couple of guys here much more knowledgable about tape heads but recently Charlie King changed out my stock Technics heads for the Pro Nortronics and it's made all the difference in the world! Bass, transparency, extension at the frequency extremes and resolution that the stock heads only dreamed about. BTW, don't forget that the new heads will take some playing time to "wear" in. Give them 50 hrs or so. You might be surprised.
Maybe someday, you should figure out a way to give Charlie's King/Cello tape pre a listen I'm still waiting for Frederik to make my Dueland VSF Black caps for my King/Cello and hope they'll be ready in a couple more weeks. Patience isn't an audiophile's strong suit and it seems that the caps are made to order and it takes them 4-6 weeks to construct them
I now have the ML5 with new Butterfly heads ,an A80R with Flux Magnetics Extended Response heads ,the “little”A67 with Nortronics heads and the A810 with 2mm separation heads. I remain in awe of the FM heads as they give such a flat response that at one stage I thought my VU meters were broken.
As I have no real expert close by I have learnt the hard way. I now believe that much more important than the heads themselves is the compatibility between head and electronics. I was well on my way to ordering the King Cello amp for my A80R/FM but bought the Eros to “test the waters “After endless problems with hum, too low gain, roller coaster freq. response etc. the Eros despite mods that nearly doubled its purchase price was consigned to the cupboard along with the idea of outboard amplification. Instead of the desirable King/Cello I went for the ML5 with its simple “swop a card “approach.
The Eros was only resurrected when the A67 was finally functional again. The A67 was a mono machine with the chances of obtaining second set of cards almost zero. However I love its looks, feel and ergonomics. My Tech then wired it for direct out and I fitted a set of Studer/Revox stereo heads with 200mH impedance deemed suitable. All the hum and inadequate gain problems resurfaced. Again to the rescue was John French with a set of Nortronics 400mH heads. Result-instant magic: Hum gone despite no extra measures, ample gain and wonderful sound. Sorry Bottlehead and feeling very sorry for not getting that King/Cello at the time!
Although I must say that the ML5 in its current state is sheer magic. The cards were set up for 15/30 ips. I needed 7.5/15ips. This meant that a lot of parts needed changing. The original caps were unavailable so were replaced with precision polystyrene types. A hefty tightly regulated outboard supply was also commissioned. These mods abolished that silvery edge and kicked the machine into another league altogether.
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I initially joined this forum for the Reel to Reel section. On the same day the VA pre arrived my little Studer A67 project came together. It is basically an A67 fitted with Nortronics heads wired directly into a heavily modified Bottlehead Eros . Much to my dismay this humble machine performed much better than my Mark Levinson ML5 master recorder pulling fine detail from mixes, throwing a huge soundstage with solid accurate bass response that the little Eros should simply not do. However by late Sunday evening I reconnected the ML5 and it simply and calmly in 5 notes re established its superiority with that huge, solid, almost calm reproduction so characteristic of the Studer Master Recorders. The improvement I heard with the A67(although it does sound fantastic) was more due to the pre amp than the source component.
I really enjoyed reading your first three paragraphs - would not mind reading in detail three pages about your findings and experiences. Your synthesis made me go back 20 years, as I also went a similar roads with similar findings.
But, as I am a Studer A80 and Eros owner, my question is about this late unit - how did you modify it?
As I have no real expert close by I have learnt the hard way. I now believe that much more important than the heads themselves is the compatibility between head and electronics. I was well on my way to ordering the King Cello amp for my A80R/FM but bought the Eros to “test the waters “After endless problems with hum, too low gain, roller coaster freq. response etc. the Eros despite mods that nearly doubled its purchase price was consigned to the cupboard along with the idea of outboard amplification. Instead of the desirable King/Cello I went for the ML5 with its simple “swop a card “approach.
Absolutely agree about matching the heads and impedances. And that calculation has to involve the wire between the head and electronics too. As I understand it, the BH is best suited to the FM or Technics heads.
I really enjoyed reading your first three paragraphs - would not mind reading in detail three pages about your findings and experiences. Your synthesis made me go back 20 years, as I also went a similar roads with similar findings.
But, as I am a Studer A80 and Eros owner, my question is about this late unit - how did you modify it?
As i said the Eros was initially ordered to save money and see what the effect of outboard electronics is in a Studer A80R. As I understand the $799 Eros is very similar in design to the $4000 Tube Repro minus the final gain stage and balancing transformers. True to form I could not resist so the stock signal caps were never used. Instead $600 worth of Teflon and Silver/gold in oil caps as well as fancy aeronautical wire were used .It was built for me by a RF engineer so wiring principles from that field were used. Truth to say it was almost identical in layout to Bottlehead's recommendations.Oh and there was the must have Siemens cca instead of the stock Russian 6922.That was the "Audiophile " bit.
The "Problems" bit was tube rush during play. I should maybe just explain that my system has a sensitivity of >110dB/W and is therefore very sensitive to noise. Components that work perfectly well with the 104dB/W Klipschorns in my other system often has to be discarded here. So the EF 86 tubes were replaced by EF 803s tubes after a lot of experimentation. This relative of the EF 86/806 was developed by Telefunken for low noise applications but does need a component rewire. The noise issue was solved but I had bass-Boy did I have BASS +3-5 dB at 63 -125Hz. It was not a head hump or test tape fringing it was just billowing boom. At Bottlehead’ s suggestion a 1.06 kOhm resistor was changed to a 5k precision pot. This did nothing for the bass but was a dandy treble control. That is when I pulled the plug.
After the introduction of the Nortronics heads the bass problems disappeared, hum disappeared and after a whole night of listening the “pot” stands at 1.08 kHz. I cannot get 1.06 kHz but I am sure it would be best. Please understand that the Eros is a fantastic product and a huge bargain and all my problems had been due to my own ignorance
The lesson for me and my Tech friends has been that tapeheads and amps are not phono cartridges and phono stages and you really need an experienced person to guide you.
Best people to answer your question Steve is either Charlie King or Rich Brown They've done a ton of comparisons and I know Rich's favorite heads are the exceedingly rare Bogen heads.
When Charlie was aligning my heads, the upper octave FR for the Nortronics (and they come in narrow or wide gap) heads extended out out past 20 K on the test tone frequency sweeps (I think that Charlie was aiming for +/- 2 dB over the whole range).
I do not believe they are better than the Studer heads.They seem to come in more variations that may suit different outboard electronics better. .I chose them because at $422 for a half and a quarter track head including adapters and international shipping the pair was less than a single Studer head .John French recommended the 400mH head for Bottlehead. I believe it is the electrical spec that made it sound better in this scenario than the 200mH Studer heads,not the make of head.In a Studer setup I would go with Studer
I have 2 headstacks for my A80s. One has the Studer butterfly heads and the other the Flux Magnetics Mastering heads. I can swap them to and fro easily. Only a very brave person will guess at which sounds better.
I do not believe they are better than the Studer heads.They seem to come in more variations that may suit different outboard electronics better. .I chose them because at $422 for a half and a quarter track head including adapters and international shipping the pair was less than a single Studer head .John French recommended the 400mH head for Bottlehead. I believe it is the electrical spec that made it sound better in this scenario than the 200mH Studer heads,not the make of head.In a Studer setup I would go with Studer
I have 2 headstacks for my A80s. One has the Studer butterfly heads and the other the Flux Magnetics Mastering heads. I can swap them to and fro easily. Only a very brave person will guess at which sounds better.
This is a horses for courses type of dealio here. John chose the 400mh heads because they had much higher output than the 200mh heads which better suited the low gain of the Bottlehead electronics. When it comes to tape decks, gain matching the heads to the preamps is the biggest deal.
