Graham Slee Gram Amp 2 SE - thoughts?

Has anyone tried the Graham Slee Gram Amp 2 Spec? I got a Michell Gyrodec last year and was on the fence between getting the Gram Amp 2 SE and a Trichord Dino, but for value for money the Gram Amp won in the end. Results were fairly similar to my prior Musical Fidelity X-LPS at first but after playing about 40 LPs (I guess around 60 hours of warming up) I'm starting to notice things on many of my LPs I havent heard before! It needed time to warm in before I could properly assess it (I got it from audioaffair.co.uk who have a 14 day demo at home option!) but now it seems much warmer and more textured than the X-LPS.

Has anyone found surface noise sounds less using this amp? It sounds like the amp is supressing it (can they do this?!) but it could just be my imagination! Its a cracking little amp for the money though, its easy to see why its getting such good reviews..

Unfortunately, I think I've now caught the upgrade bug and I'm thinking about getting some Monitor Audio RS8s.. Just need to persuade the wife now!!

 

ifthis is the little plastic boxed one, i borrowed one for a few weeks off of another forum member a couple of years ago. Although it was a fine sounding unit, i thought that i didn't sound any better then my older ( & bought s/h) Rotel phono stage and i also found that it was susceptable to picking up RFI from my mobile phone.
Basically I had put my phone down near to the amp and then noticed that i could hear the phone talking to the local transmitter ( or whatever they do ), the phono stage was still suffering from this even though i moved the phone away from the unit. It stopped being effected only when the phone was more than about 6 or 7 metres away.

I was suffering from noise being generated by my cenral heating boiler at the time, which is why i was being hyper critical and very aware of any noise issues.

 

Just to be clear, that refers to the Dino (which is in a perspex case) yes not the Slees, which are metal cased.

 

Yes - previously owned a very high end unit - one of the grooves + and the Slee was shockingly good - and better still with the bigger power supply which i think is mandatory upgrade. Still have the Slee the plastic box one is much same as metal box one except - wait for it - different box! Highly reccomended but i guess match depends on rest of kit as ever.

 

Hi David.

I had this very amp for a while and found it very good. Needs to be left on all the time for best performance. Care is needed with placement as mine picked up interference until it got its own shelve.

Andy

 

Just had a check through my old PM's. I borrowed the phono stage back in August 2005, it was a Graham Slee 'Gram Amp 2'. At that time it definately was housed in a small black plastic case, i now see that all of the Slee phono stages are housed in metal cases, even the chaepest one. My comments were based on using this older unit....