Jeff Rowland Model 2

[Brandon Hartwick]

Those Krell and Rowland units are so nice! I remember when these came out, and they were awesome. Kinda like Classe and Klyne and other superbly designed gear of the era. I get kinda skittish now about buying them, as it's been 25 years since many of these were released. I'm not sure how they would compare to new units of today at the same price point.

There's definitely an element of risk involved whenever buying gear upwards or 30 years old, capacitors dry out regardless of they're in a $200 pre-amp or a $20,000 pre-amp. This unit might very well need a rebuild but I'm pretty good with a soldering iron and a simple re-cap doesn't really scare me.

I'm sure there's a lot of newer gear that's also very good but I find most new stuff really doesn't have the same level of build quality of some of the vintage gear. I don't see very many manufacturers making dual chassis class A preamplifiers these days.

I was really tempted by a Jeff Rowland Concerto preamp, it had an absolutely stunning chassis machined from a solid block of aluminum. When I did some research on it the internals were pretty underwhelming for the price, especially when you compare it to the Krell.

 

[pjr300]

Audio temptation, such an affliction! I'm currently being tempted by a Rowland Model 1....

 

[Brandon Hartwick]

Audio temptation, such an affliction! I'm currently being tempted by a Rowland Model 1....

They're really nice, I love mine. Some people say they're very warm sounding but I find they pair very well with ESL panels.

 

[Rehan Azim Hashmi]

Brandon few reasons why hum and other noise from turntable perhaps you forgot to ground or correctly ground turntable or perhaps the ground connection is not tight.