In the thread I started on the Audiophiliac review of the Moreplay, I said I would share my personal thoughts on the Moreplay once I built it, and compare it to my Shindo Monbrison. Here goes…
First of all, the Moreplay is the easiest Bottlehead kit I have ever built. Lots of room inside the chassis. Not too many parts soldered at the same points. No tiny circuit boards with even tinier solder pads. Excellent, clearly laid out manual. Testing of the various stages as you go rather than at the end. I definitely give the kit build a 10/10.
Steve Guttenberg couldn’t be more right about one thing: the Moreplay is an outstanding, musical preamp. I haven’t heard the BeePre but I can see the Moreplay being an end-game preamp for those who value musicality and transparency. Treble roll off? Not to my ears.
Over the years I’ve grown to value those components that excel at being the least-colored component in the chain. One generally has to pay a LOT of money to get those kinds of components but the Moreplay is an exception to that rule. In fact, the Moreplay reminds me in many ways of my Shindo Monbrison preamp.
The Monbrison is an unusual component in my experience in that it manages to make almost everything sound good and musical while still being transparent and revealing. It’s warm and supremely musical but not syrupy and it lets detail shine through.
In those respects, the Moreplay bears a strong resemblance to the Monbrison. Tones with the Moreplay are warm and saturated yet still detailed and transparent. It’s an extremely musical preamp like the Monbrison.
The Moreplay is more transparent than the Monbrison. The Moreplay readily differentiates between amplifiers. With the Paramount 2A3 amps the sound is warmer and more bass/midrange focused. With my 300B amps the sound is more detailed, balanced and lit-up. The Moreplay is more transparent than the Monbrison in this respect in that the differences between these amps are more apparent with the Moreplay.
The Moreplay is also revealing of different tubes. The stock Russian tubes actually sound quite good, but RCA 6V6’s aren’t quite as dark sounding and seem a bit quieter, detailed and clear. The Russian tubes are definitely good enough to live with, but I do prefer the RCA’s. The Moreplay is also revealing of recordings. Both the Monbrison and Moreplay have a tendency to make recordings sound good. This is a real plus IF there is no loss of transparency. The Moreplay reveals somewhat more differences between recordings than the Monbrison but both are way better than most preamps at making lesser recording quite listenable. The real trick that both these preamps pull off is that they make nearly all recordings sound good without any sense that they are colored or not transparent. Quite the trick!
The other characteristic of the Moreplay that I appreciate is that it sounds great with rock and classical music. Pianos, violins, cellos, Strats, Teles and Les Pauls sound like they should.
Given the price, I had no expectation that the Moreplay would be competitive with the Monbrison, but since the Moreplay is going into a different system I figured I could live with that and if it was too inferior I would sell the Moreplay and build a BeePre.
Once I listened to it there was no question that the Moreplay was staying.
Don’t ask me if the Moreplay is better than the Monbrison. I would say the Moreplay and Monbrison are like 2 brothers. Many similarities, cut from the same (musical) cloth, but also some differences. The similarities they share are the strengths I value in a preamp and the differences are of lesser importance to me. But like a parent, you love them both and it’s hard to say one is better than the other! I will say this: had I listened to the Moreplay and Monbrison side-by-side before purchasing, it would be very hard to justify buying the Monbrison. The Monbrison is an outstanding preamp but the Moreplay is too. It really is that good.
