McIntosh Preamp derailed?

Over the past few months I have been considering upgrading my Pre-amp.  I am currently running a Yamaha C-70 Preamp.  This is a very nice and quite capable preamp.  It has dual phono inputs, which to me is essential; it allows me to choose what source to record from so I can listen to other material while I record something from another source.  It is way cool; it also has an equalizer, which I seldom use to shape the sound.  It has lots of gain as well, which I seldom use as I have my amps set to 11.  The preamp needs to be warmed up to perform properly since it sits in a cold basement.  I have been considering changing this unit out for some time and I have been looking at McIntosh C-33 preamp as the model I will most like to acquire.  They are expensive, and could cost me around a thousand dollars.  I will be saving for a long time to get one!

Meet the challenger, a $150 - 4 watt per channel, flea-watt tube amp.  I acquired it a year or so ago and I was using it in my office system powering some Polk mini speakers.  Yesterday, I was going through my connections and labeling any changes that I had made when I noticed that I had one vacant input on my amplifier switch.  I was thinking at first that I could get something cool to fill that opening.  I walked into my office and saw the little guy and thought that I would like to hear it with those new PSB 6T speakers that I had purchased recently.  So I disconnected it from the few cables connecting it to my office system and moved it to the other room.  (You would not believe how nice it is to have amplifier options!).

While I was looking for spare speaker cable, which I am nearly out of, I discovered one very long piece of a home-made speaker cable that I started to make a while back.  I made three of them and finished two, which have been in service for some time.  These speaker wires are made of Category 5e, solid-strand data cable.  I used some of my old cabling tricks to ensure that I had a nick-free cable end.  I used shrink tubing to ensure a neat and tidy end and marked which side would be positive.  I feel these are awesome cables, as inside there are 4-pairs of wires, and each twisted with each other and the other 3 pairs to eliminate EMI interference in data transmission.  Well, I could not see how I could miss since the signals that are sent to your speakers aren't really that much different than the impulses that network equipment sent over them.  Plus, the side benefit, there are eight 24-gauge solid copper strands in each cable.   I used one cable (all 8 strands), for the positive and one for the negative, sure I could have split out 2-pairs (4 wires) for positive and negative, but I decided the benefit might be lost and there might not be the same sound if I use the same cable for both.  So I cut the large cable in half, prepared all four ends on each and I was ready about a half-hour later!

So I connected the 4 watt flea amp to my system and ran a dual connector from one of my outputs from the pre-amp and hooked it up.  I connected the speaker terminals to my amplifier switch and I was ready for some listening.  I figured, since the PSB speakers have an efficiency rating of 89, they may not work very well with this low powered amplifier.  I powered off the McIntosh and powered up the flea-watt amp. I was wrong.  I could not believe the sound coming from this little amp and those speakers.  I was quite surprised, so I put on a familiar recording, INXS – Kick, and listened to the entire recording.  WOW!  I did not just hear things I had not noticed before, it was like the speakers become 10 times larger and the sound enveloped the room. Now, this will not play especially loud with these few watts, but it goes louder than I thought it would!  I know It probably sounds ridiculous, but come on over and check it out for yourself if you are skeptical.  This little stereo amp is, using my friend’s standard, not even an especially good cheap one.  It has one tube, which is a triode tube I believe, and does the work of a set of tubes, and an electronic board which eliminates the need for one tube as well is built into this little amp.  Most of the better, inexpensive tube amps have two or more tubes doing all the jobs that get the signal from your source to your speakers for better overall sound and a pure tube-based signal path. 

How did this de-rail the McIntosh Preamp?  Well, since I have a darn good preamp now, I may wait for it to die (if it ever does), and pick up a medium range tube amp as one of my amplifier options.  I have been looking around and I may buy an inexpensive, vintage amp with 10 - 50 watts to replace my flea-watt amp, (which I will probably give to my brother to make a believer out of him).  If the sound is this awesome with a cheap tube-amp how much better will it be with a more-expensive, better designed piece of tube gear? 

I intend to find out!  What are your thoughts?

Keep listening and keep that stress down!

Jeff