Your All Time Favorite Preamplifiers?

[exile]

Threshold NS 10 and SL 10 after Jon Soderberg did his magic.

 

[Echolane]

I can’t resist chiming in.
i have two favorite preamps. My present one, which is less than 6 months old is a Luxman CL-38uC tube preamplifier. It has a stunningly attractive vintage image with real wood top and sides as well as all sorts of tone controls .

I love that it has a phono stage and that the phono stage is the equivalent of its standalone separate phono stage. IOW, unusually good. It also has one balanced input. I wish it had more, but I’m happy to have one. I confess I can’t discriminate between its contribution to audio excellence versus the Luxman amplifier I have also, the MQ-88uC. How does one tell? I can only say they sound great!k

My second favorite preamplifier is vintage, and I use it paired with a vintage Adcom amplifier at my desktop computer audio system.. It is the Musical Fidelity A3cr. If you were to read a review on this preamplifier perhaps you would see why i like it so much, but here’s an excerpt.

I really enjoy using this preamp and again, the reviewer says it best:

The Musical Fidelity A3CR may not be perfect, but it’s hard to find any major fault. Actually, you need to really exert yourself to find its minor flaws. It is spectacularly well built. It is deliberately over-designed to cope with the widest possible range of sources, cables and power amplifiers. Sonically, it belongs in the top rank of all the preamplifiers I have auditioned.