Prima Luna users - happy so far?

Hi Ema, nice to see a new member. I have a demo pair of Sevens right now. These have also had an upgrade along the lines you mention, except with Golden Dragons and Svetlanas. If the delivered units don't have the characteristics you outline, which I also like, then I'll have to do a similar upgrade. I wondered how you decided which 12AX7s to get. There are a lot of alternatives around.

Re the mains cable, the only small complaint I have so far is that the lead is not gripped very snugly by the socket. When I'm messing around with cables and this gets disturbed, the power can be interrupted briefly. This can't be good.

Your speakers are about 6 dB more sensitive than mine and they seem an interesting design. I found quite a polite review here . Since I only just got mine, I wasn't going to change them so went for more watts instead.

Thanks for your input.

 

primaluna upgrades

Hi again, Steve.
Regarding the stock mains cable, you're totally right: also mine has the same problem, it's the only serious disappointment about PL (probably they used a defective stock). by the way, yesterday the QED Qonduit that I ordered finally arrived... I made few hours of listening last night (and only few minutes at quite high volume), but the first impression (I hope it's not only suggestion) is of a more tight sound; and, I'm pretty shure about this, at any given position of the volume knob the actual volume is louder than before.
For what concern the choice of 12ax7, well I'm much more a music lover than an audiofile (it's just one year that I returned to use a pretty serious hi-fi; long time ago I experienced my uncle's wonderful tube and solid state gears and attended with him to hi-fi fairs, but afterwards I spent (=threw) many years in using awful and super-cheap gears!). So I just read online fora and reviews and I found out that the Tung-Sol 12ax7 is very loved by some audiofiles (and by a lot of guitar players) for being quite close in sound to the legendary NOS Mullard's, so I tried a pair. I bought the 12ax7's and the el34's at www.thetubestore.com .

 

Thanks, I've read several reviews, including the hifi.nl one. The XS is a nice unit I guess. But that's only for MUCH later, if I would ever consider other analog sources. For the moment I have already enough wishes....

 

Just to say I'm still surviving on the dealer's demo pair of Sevens, the story is that a favourable review stateside has created a lot of demand, and I am still very happy with them. Also I have introduced a passive pre. I'm still interested to hear stories with tube-rolling, mains cables that fit, etc. Now I'm even thinking of changing the front speakers in my other, 5-ch, system to valves. Thanks.

 

I have a PL2 as well, and I love it to bits.....quiet and delicate when it needs to be but also capable of some seriously loud headbanging in my odd mentalist moment .

I'm still on a quest to get some speakers that'll do it justice though (focused on the tannoy prestige range at the mo'.......just need some money first )

It's a piece of kit I don't think I'll ever need to replace.....the autoadaptive bias board makes swapping in new valves a piece of pee.
That'll give me enough variety of different flavours (svetlana/golden dragon/mullard etc etc) that it'll be like a new amp when I eventually do need to swap the valves.

Also, If you want a piece of kit to last and is well built too, the PL's are hard to beat imo

 

I'm wondering in view of the comments above whether to get some upgraded tubes lined up, starting perhaps with the 12AU7 input tubes and 12AX7/ECC83. Bent Jessie Recording & Supply Inc has a nice summary of 12AX7 NOS characteristics.

 

We will be testing the new Dialogue 2 amp. It is just in and it is very heavy...