Modwright SWL 9.0SE

[tkam]

Ever since I sold off "The Dragon" I had been debating what I wanted to do with my speaker rig. The obvious thing to do was to just buy a new pre-amp but I also thought about selling my power amps and going the integrated route. Low and behold I found quite a deal on audiogon for a Modwright SWL 9.0SE with the bybee upgrades (yes i know they are worthless) and more importantly upgraded caps (mundorf silver oil caps which appear to have a good reputation).

I've had it for about two days now and it really matches up well with my ICE Power based amps. It has absolutely wonderful tone and every note has the proper amount of texture and depth to them. I'll post more detailed impressions later but suffice to say I'm impressed so far.

Now for the gear porn:

[postjack]

awesome pics! modwright is the bees knees.

[n_maher]

Jacob, I wouldn't bother, just another set of cables you'd need and more clutter. If you're happy with the Cap premap, I'd leave well enough alone.

[Dusty Chalk]

i bet that sounds great! i wonder if it would be worthwhile for me to get a separate preamp, though the preamp in my Capitole sounds very good (and is well rated)...

I wouldn't -- I mean, if you ever get the chance to hear a really high-end preamp in your rig, by all means, do so, but if I had that rig, I'd want to hear that it made a positive difference first.

[humanflyz]

TVCs for the win.

[aerius]

Learn something new every day, I had no idea Modwright made linestages, I've always thought they just did CD player mods. Congrats on the purchase!

[purk]

That tube rectified PSU is pretty special, you should check out the Mullard one for even more impressive performance I experienced about 15 to 20% imrovement in sonics on my Sony SCD-777ES after I upgraded from SS PSU to the tube rectified one.

[tkam]

The guy I bought it from actually included a Mullard 5ar4 that I've been using since it arrived.

[tom_hankins]

i bet that sounds great! i wonder if it would be worthwhile for me to get a separate preamp, though the preamp in my Capitole sounds very good (and is well rated)...

I used the preamp section in my CapitoleMKII, and ran my system through my Prima SE DAC. Although the preamp section was good (very good with the DAC) I used the Aesthetix Calypso, BAT VK-31SE, and the Ayre K-1XE before I sold the AA and all were a big step up over the AA. Better dynamics, bigger sound stage, more detail with the Ayre and A.C, about the same with the BAT but still a bigger more robust sound. YMMV, but wortha try. Buy used and resell if your not happy.

I also tried the Audio research LS25 MKII and stayed with the AA instead.

[purk]

Learn something new every day, I had no idea Modwright made linestages, I've always thought they just did CD player mods. Congrats on the purchase!

They also have a mod out for squeezebox w/ tube output. I always love the way my modwright sound, hopefully my up and coming Exemplar 2900 will give 90% of my Kern/Modwright SCD-777ES.

[tom_hankins]

The Modwright phonostage is also supposed to very nice. Wish it had balanced outputs on it.

[purk]

tom_hankins

High Rollers

Newbie

I'm sorry Tom but it is very tough to image you with that title. This is the case when number of post count is meaningless.

[Dusty Chalk]

There's actually a review of this preamp in a recent issue of UHF magazine (Canadian high-fi magazine) (the one with the Linn Artikulate on the cover).

[tom_hankins]

There's actually a review of this preamp in a recent issue of UHF magazine (Canadian high-fi magazine) (the one with the Linn Artikulate on the cover).

Thanks for the info. I have never seen that mag before. i went ahead and ordered a six issue subscription to check it out.

6moons.com also did a review and liked the preamp alot. They have reviewed the new balanced (LS36) from Modwright also.

[Dusty Chalk]

I liked it enough to subscribe to it at one point. When I saw it on a newsstand the other day, I realized I had let my subscription lapse. I think I will resubscribe, myself.

It's kind of skinny for the price, and all the prices and local ads are Canadian-oriented, and they have an affiliation with a couple companies, but I like the fact that most reviews are by multiple people.

[iceman94]

Any thoughts on how the Modwright compares to the Dragon?

[tkam]

I didn't have them at the same time to do any direct comparisions but I will say that the Modwright has a much lower noise floor. This is probably due to the fact that the Dragon just really had too much gain to be very useful as a pre-amp. Sure it was nice but when you can only use 3 or 4 steps on the SA it's a real pain to get the volume level you want.