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Here's an example, Luxman Preamp CL-35 MkIII

Posted by Peter Breuninger (R) on January 29, 2006 at 05:35:57

In Reply to: I hope the "trust your ears" people read this posted by Dave Pogue on January 29, 2006 at 04:11:46:

Thanks for the feedback.

For example: The Luxman CL-35 MkIII preamp has a cult following. My time with it lasted three months. Over the first three days I heard the following; soft low end, tube rush on linestage and phono, grain using the tone controls, endlessly deep sound field (the sound of capacitors), beautiful midrange, and gobbs of ambiance. From a quantitative perspective I was right on. Qualitatively, I loved the unit's musical qualities (better than the reference) hence I purchased a second example to test consistency.

After three weeks I was beginning to wane on my qualitative opinions as I played more program material, and did more equip. substitutions. By the end of three months I sold both units. One of the buyers, sold it as well within three months (I saw on Ebay).

What I thought was a great reference vintage preamp for $1,100 to $1,500 ended up being very average and very "tuby" sounding and worth far less from a sonic stand point if you compare to (and value) today's higher equipment standards (There are other Luxman tube preamps that are superior to the CL-35 Mk III, BTW).

Another example is the Eico HF-81 under review. I have owned a unit for over two years but, I had a recent restoration done and it changed the sonics. I purchased a second unit and had it restored to the same specs (JA picked this one up in Dec for measuring). I compared them and they sounded about the same. I'm almost at the end of three months on it (the restored unit) and I am writing the review now. I'm glad I waited for if I would have reviewed the unrestored unit I would have miscalculated one of the unit's (+)(-) attributes.

Peter Breuninger

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