I long remembered Bo's advice on XLR as I searched for a new pre-amp. The initial requirements were: the preamp had to support XLR, have a phono input and be of recent technology. As much as I valued vintage gear, I find that the newer gear of this decade just surpasses most of the gear of yesteryear in performance.
Searched for months on Ebay and Audiogon and came to the conclusion that Audiogon is the way to go. That's where I got my Perreaux 200p amplifier. I found an intriguing classified ad for a BV Audio preamp. Never even seen one on Ebay and there was only one for sale on Audiogon. I was considering Classe, Aragon and others.
The BV Audio P10 is still being made in Quincy, MA and retails for almost $2,200. Not that it's that expensive compared to others. The guy selling it, was replacing it with an $8K Conrad Johnson and he told me that it took a lot of listening to convince him to get the CJ. He had a three day guarantee and the pre-amp supported all my requirements. He promised that it would knock my socks off, so I purchased the amp. He's had a lot of experience and has owned a lot of equipment, so I took his word for it.
The P10 has some very cool features. No volume pot or attenuator. The volume is handled through a CPU, so you'll never have 'dirty pot' noise or wearing out of the volume pot and you get better channel separation. There are over 200 steps to the volume, so you can get the 'exact' volume you want. The relays are gold in sealed nitrogen gas units, so you'll never have dirty relays. The phono section uses Burr Brown and Analog Device chips for the A/D conversion and is MM/MC adjustable. All the other inputs are adjustable for gain through the remote control, so you can balance the gain between the different inputs. It's main tenet is that it's supposed to be as transparent as possible. Another reason I purchased it was the lack of used units. This was the first one I had ever seen in months of cruising Ebay and Audiogon. That meant to me, that the people purchasing them, were keeping them.
The P10 got delivered yesterday afternoon and before I went home, I picked up some Mogami Gold Series XLR cables from 'Guitar Center' and a Monster Cable RCA set for the DAC (an XLR CD player is next on the list). I set it all up, wondering if it was going to be as good as the seller stated. I have not been happy with the system. The old pre-amp was the main weakness. It made me suspect of the L-300's. The old sound wasn't all that great. It could get plenty loud, but the midrange seemed to be dominated by the lower end of the midbass and I sensed a lost of detail in the upper midrange, as well as it 'sitting back'. The bass was a little too boomy for me. I wondered if I was going to have to swap out speakers too. Was a 3-way, not the way to go? Would a 4-way give me the midrange detail I was looking for.
Turned it all on and started listening to well-known tracks. The volume adjustment from the remote control took longer because of the finer steps, but it was nice to set it exactly to where you wanted it and with subtle room to adjust it. The volume didn't jump up sharply, but rather ramped up and downed smoothly. The display was readable from ten feet away.
Now I'm happy. The L-300's weren't to be faulted after all. The upper end of the midrange came back out of hiding, flaunting detail I hadn't heard before. The high's were nicely done and the lower end of the midbass was totally behaving. The lows were tight and clean without sounding boomy. It was an overall balanced sound output that had a very nice transparency to it. There are no 'tone' adjustments and that was fine with me. This is a great pre-amp and I was happy to have shelled out the $700 for it used. If you're looking for a nice preamp that gets along well with MOSFET amps and JBL's, I'd like to recommend this. I'm including a linkee below. Click on the 'technology' area for an interesting animated demonstration. Not a lot of marketing, hype or even reputation, but nobody's selling their's either and I'm not selling mine anytime soon...
http://www.bvaudio.com/p10.htm