MotorToad
Well-known member
My "main" preamp has been my B&K Pro 5 since i bought in... oh... damn. '89? '90? Something like that. It had started giving me issues and I came had an ADCOM tuner/preamp in another system so I just put that in until I dealt whit the B&K. Recently I've noticed teh left channel was really strong and I thought it was the room (hugely asymmetrical) but eventually got the gumption to track it down and found it's the ADCOM that leans to the left.
Anyway, the B&K is a "bare necessities" concept design and some of the necessities left out where things like switches that don't rot, pots that don't rust, and connectors that don't break. I finally got around to taking it apart and cleaning it, basically just bathing it in electronic contact cleaner. Plug it in, click it on, warm it up, and it's all good. If there is anything to complain about, it's that it's kind of austere... a little dry. It reminds me of the reason I never really enjoyed KEF (or several other British speakers), all the detail is there but there isn't much life to it. Certainly a cheap complaint, and I can't put my finger on it, but it's there. The bass now is more tame, it's a lot tighter but I have to say I kind of miss the crazy vibration the ADCOM had. Even though it might seem diminished, I still had to spend a fair amount of time going through the living room tracking down things that were standing too close to other things and making noise when they shook.
The funny thing was, I sat there and listened to most of several albums (Sheffield Drive, Fleetwood Mac Rumours, Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here, Cars Cars, and Crash Test Dummies God Shuffled his Feet) while drinking a 12 year-old Scotch (Bowmore, get some) and realized the Scotch was the youngest thing there by a fair margin!
It was Fleetwood Mac that most made me think it sounded dry. Second Hand News actually made me thirsty (see Scotch reference above), but I genuinely thought during Never Going Back Again that if a guitar string broke I might just lose an eye! It was so close and so real.
I guess I'll listen more, do some A/B testing.
And buy another preamp.
Anyway, the B&K is a "bare necessities" concept design and some of the necessities left out where things like switches that don't rot, pots that don't rust, and connectors that don't break. I finally got around to taking it apart and cleaning it, basically just bathing it in electronic contact cleaner. Plug it in, click it on, warm it up, and it's all good. If there is anything to complain about, it's that it's kind of austere... a little dry. It reminds me of the reason I never really enjoyed KEF (or several other British speakers), all the detail is there but there isn't much life to it. Certainly a cheap complaint, and I can't put my finger on it, but it's there. The bass now is more tame, it's a lot tighter but I have to say I kind of miss the crazy vibration the ADCOM had. Even though it might seem diminished, I still had to spend a fair amount of time going through the living room tracking down things that were standing too close to other things and making noise when they shook.
The funny thing was, I sat there and listened to most of several albums (Sheffield Drive, Fleetwood Mac Rumours, Pink Floyd Wish You Were Here, Cars Cars, and Crash Test Dummies God Shuffled his Feet) while drinking a 12 year-old Scotch (Bowmore, get some) and realized the Scotch was the youngest thing there by a fair margin!
It was Fleetwood Mac that most made me think it sounded dry. Second Hand News actually made me thirsty (see Scotch reference above
), but I genuinely thought during Never Going Back Again that if a guitar string broke I might just lose an eye! It was so close and so real. I guess I'll listen more, do some A/B testing.
And buy another preamp.
