Maybe vintage preamps are NOT the way....

My 1988 vintage Musical Concepts MC2t preamp has teflon caps in the phono stage and a teflon circuit board. Not only sounds great, but when I cook scrambled eggs on it they don't stick!

 

There's got be one in every crowd.

 

Tony, there's way more than one in this crowd.

 

While I don't doubt their claim, it makes me wonder: when you shut the thing off for, say, a few days, do you then need to play music through it for another 100 hours for it to again really sound it's best? Not a problem for my solid state MC2t, which was designed to be left on all the time (no on/off switch), but perhaps so for a tubed unit?

 

Black faceplates rock dude. Gold faceplates are strictly for straights and squares.

 

Don, No 100 hours burn-in is all they need according to c-j. I have black, gold and silver face plates, and there is no doubt in my mind that gold is the color that rocks.

 

Yes, of course he can.

A friend of mine does this exact same thing. He either takes a vintage pre, takes out the tone controls and gets a very nice sounding system, OR he just builds the damn thing from scratch, designing his stuff by following the schematics of the original gear. He has built 4 or 5 complete pres based on Macintosh gear.

And no, they don't have a gold faceplate, but they sound stunning.... and look great. He sells them for around $700. This means his cost is lower than $500.

Actually, a Foreplay 2 used to go for $150, and it was sonic bliss (the new one is $350).

EDIT: Actually, this guy did build a gold faceplate pre. It's STUNNING. I mean it. It's better looking than most audio equipment I've seen. He sold it for $1,000 USD. Check it out.

 

You mean McIntosh (Unless he builds computers )

 

Argh, you are right! It's McIntosh!

The pre in the pic is based on a McIntosh one.