Originally Posted by
speakerdave
I own a copy of each of the first two, and they are both on the shelf. Any C20 is very old and should be significantly rebuilt, an expensive proposition. There is high praise for this preamp (rebuilt) coming from various quarters, but I can't speak to that.
The AR SP8 is a very good preamp. It was revised, though, at least twice, and the later versions seem to catch more dollars in the second hand market. I like my original copy, but it has stood as my spare for years because I have another I like better, and that is the C-J P9. Not a perfect preamp, but probably the one I will be settling on for the foreseeable future.
It would be fair to say those two preamps represent two types of tube preamps. The SP-8 can be characterized as modern, accurate, maybe a little cool or analytical, the P9 as warm, passes the emotion threshold easily. But for me neither is the performance goal of an electronic audio device. That goal is transparency, a quality I have found to be elusive, transient, dependent on very good recordings, and not the property of any particular technology. My 'problem' is that I am not in the market for electronics that cost multiple tens of thousands or even multiple thousands of dollars. I hang on to the C20 because there may be a day when I'll rebuild it and that sought after transparency may be there.
For the time being, I find it most often with the P9, especially when coupled with the McIntosh MC30. Mind, I biamp the treble through a simple passive high pass into a world class beryllium compression driver on a horn designed for it, so I get whatever treble is available and the faults of the bass in the MC30 are irrelevant to me. I don't use a super tweeter, so the VVHF is not a concern. I use very good woofers and a very good bass amp, so I can live with the slight wooliness of the bass in the P9. I willingly live with it for the midrange, especially on phono which at moments can be amazingly real. I even go along with the fact that the three stage phono preamp inverts absolute phase while the line inputs do not, an extraordinary accommodation to price point, IMHO.