Couple of fiddly broken wires and a pair of 'extra' resistors at the end, but nothing fatal.
In the system and running.
How does it sound?
A bit more ''forward' than the 'laid back' 12AX7 Consonance based DIY HIFI Supply 'Cole' I've been enjoying for 20+ years. But also maybe more 'information' as well. Break-in? That's easy as my system is on most every day. Maybe even do a 24/7 this week as see what happens.
Going to need longer interconnects to run both phono stages (old and new) at the same time as space in the rack is now gone and the phono pre and the line stage are at opposite end of the rack. Plus the cables from the tonearm to the step up and the step up and the phono preamp are, by choice, kept short.
But I'll give the Eros 2 a week to break-in before I do A:B testing and that with a couple audiophile friends with 'younger' ears.
Also plan to resist the temptation to roll tubes and swap caps for at least a month. With all the active loads/shunt regulation/constant current sources used in top-end Bottlehead gear, tube rolling can be a bit of a disappointment anyway. OTOH, low noise and low distortion are maybe worth the price?
How will it stack up against other top-of-the-line tube based phono-preamps? Might get a chance to find out soon enough. Local audiophile has a collection of them, from 20+ year old George Wright phono preamps (two) to newer, modern multi-thousand $$$ stuff as recently reviewed in Stereophile such as the PrimaLuna EVO line. He's got a vinyl only rig (no CDs or streaming) with a multi-thousand $$$ VPI table, 300B monoblocks of some sort and Tannoy speakers.
He's bringing some of his best vinyl over next week to hear the Eros and I plan to take the Eros over to his place to see how it compares to some of his various pieces.
Based on what I'm hearing right off the work bench, the Eros 2 should do fine.
