The EAR 912 is an integrated EAR 868 line stage (same circuits) with a three-tube phono stage. Its phono stage is very similar to the circuit in the standalone 88pb EAR phono, but without the 4th buffer tube stage. I'm very familiar with all this equipment. Bonzo is absolutely correct in his assessment that the EAR line stage is its biggest weakness. The EAR phono stages, I'd rank as OK. That is, without the EAR line stage in play, an 88pb with Silver Emia (a combo I've tried extensively) is good but not great. I think the TDP wound transformers add a lot of color and veil. And depending on the 6922 tube of choice, more of the same.
I've also had the VdH Grail and silver Emia AVC in house for an extended demo. My personal favorite combo thus far, though, has been the Emia phono stage with D3a tubes and the Emia silver AVC. This is my long term winning combo as it does it all: PRaT, tone, soundstage, detail, dynamics.
Feel free to PM for more detailed info.
Just spotted this thread. Your comments here ring true.
I had an EAR 912 for several years but recently sold it. It's a very nice piece of kit indeed but when I recently changed power amps to some Silvercore 833C monoblocks, their additional transparency revealed a weakness in the linestage that hadn't been apparent with lesser amplification. I tried various other linestages, valve and solid state, used with the EAR 912 purely as a phono stage, and confirmed this to my satisfaction. It is undoubtedly a bottleneck.
I think the phono stage is excellent by any standards. I've struggled to beat it (tried several phono stages as Kedar mentions). However I had already been bypassing the internal SUTs using external Miyajima ETR-Stereo and ETR-Mono SUTs respectively - these were a significant upgrade over the internals. If I was to bypass the linestage as well there was no point in having an integrated preamp. But replacing it has been difficult - used with the same external SUTs, even the Allnic H7000V only beats it by a whisker. The Allnic suffers the same in the SUT department, incidentally - its internal SUTs are adequate but can be bettered, and of course you only get one SUT input now, the other MC input uses an internal head amp and is not in the same league as a external SUT. I've yet to hear Allnic's external head amp.
The linestage I've settled on is an the Audiopax Model 5, in 4th generation mode, PSU in particular substantially improved. I had an original first generation one for a play - this was an excellent performer, but it was an early all-black 2004 model and a bit flaky/unreliable. I then heard the Audiopax L50 which I was extremely impressed by, but price-wise I can't stretch to right now having just bought the Allnic. My compromise has been to order a new Model 5 to my spec, fully balanced (two inputs one output balanced, plus assorted unbalanced outputs). I'm pretty sure it will do the job very well indeed I'd probably have been happy with the first generation model had it been in better fettle.
What did the Audiopax bring to the party over the EAR 912 linestage? Oodles of detail, and a staggering ability with space and 3D-ness. It just allows the Silvercores to bloom and perform to their full potential. Going back to using the EAR line stage was far from shabby, but lacked the musical insight I was getting from the Audiopax.
In saying all this, my intent is not in any way do down the EAR 912. I wouldn't pay full new price for one but bought judiciously second hand it's extremely hard to beat as an overall package and my total outlay for SUTs, phono stage and linestage is a good three to four times what I've just sold the EAR for, so hardly a like for like comparison.