Then again, it's cheap compared to the First Audio Passive Magnetic preamp. A snip at £2,750!
At least with the Creek, if you want a pot in a box and aren't the sort of person who's good with a soldering iron, the Creek OBH22 is about the cheapest one you can buy.
And a pot in a box works surprisingly well if you have a the right components in the rest of the chain, and are prepared to have CD, passive pre and power amp more or less next to one another.
Alan, you seem to be as addictive to these chat systems as I am , but what is a Magnetic preamp, apart from maybe a transformer, if it's anything more then it's not passive !!! I am keen on design and if i've missed some finer point then please enlighten me. Having recently built a 100W per channel amp into a fine Italian case and added the PSU and input switching relays with front panel buttons all for some £150 for a one off then what could the Creek do for me ???
If you have the input switching and gain control built into the amp, the need for a passive pre is pretty much academic. But, if you use a CD player and a power amp and simply need to attenuate the CD player's signal, a pot in a box is a good idea, although it tends to attenuate high frequencies more aggressively than others.
As such, it needs to be combined with care (generally, a pot in a box has lower input impedance and higher output impedance than active gain stages, so the capacitance of the cable becomes crucially important - in reality, this means interconnect cables about 20cm long at maximum).
As to the Passive Magnetic preamp... you got it, it's a pot in a box with a pair of screened transformers. No active gain stages. Not bad for nearly £3,000. And it's not alone - check out the Audio Synthesis Passion preamps (passive preamp with active remote control pot, £1,300), and there used to be a Cello passive pot, made up of a handful of bits of silver wire, an ALPS pot and a alloy case. It was nearly £800 when sold 20 years ago - that would be nearer £2,000 today.
Perhaps now you see why the OBH22 begins to look like a bargain among the built passive preamps!
Maybe I'm in the wrong buisiness as I fully understand what your saying. The HF attenuation is only an issue if it's in a seperate box anyway as there will be very little capacitance with no cable. So what do you think 100W class T, toroidial mains tranny, mains filtering built in, Alps blue velvet pot, 3 selectable inputs, all gold connectors, responce 7Hz - 35KHz etc. Maybe £7995 + VAT ???
Hello John, I have been using various types of passive preamps and find the most expensive ones sound so much better than the cheap ones, the best I have heard use cryogenically treated pots and switches, oxegion free silver wire and gold plated phono plugs not forgeting the best interconnecs the more you pay the better it sounds I have found, the next change will be a better quality mains cable and plugs some oak cones and torylite shelve and floor standing units the oak cones seem to bring out an improvement to the sound and the stereo image.
