Eastern Electric Minimax PRE AMPLIFER.
Excellent condition.
Pet free, smoke free, music saturated room.
Great upgrades by Tom Tutay.
NOS tubes available. NOS 6 x 4 included.
$699. A few years after their initial launch, Bill at Morningstar upgraded all the stock units to the consistent praise of all listeners. In addition, my unit was tweaked by Tom Tutay (one of the finest tube modders out there and a true blue gentleman). The goal was to provide a greater range in the volume control and while he was at it he provided a means to further reduce the all ready low noise floor since I have 98 db sensitive speakers. The gain was reduced slightly and that has proved beneficial with the associated amplifiers I utilized. This should prove helpful with higher efficiency speakers. My range on the volume dial went from 8 to 9:30 to around 9 to 2:30. This makes it much easier to dial in the precise volume desired. The overall sound quality improved, too.
Both goals were readily achieved. BTW, if you ever need tube mods, I give Tom my strongest recommendation. Re: Tom's mods. While Tom had the unit open, I thought it wise to ask what else can be done to improve upon it. He said with these final mods, he'd taken the minimax to the max. We'd reached any sane law of diminishing returns and any further upgrades would require widening the chassis and an ultra high $ parts swap. I purchased a few NOS tubes for the unit, including the king of rectifiers, the Tungsol, an available option. I will include one NOS 6x4 rectifier tube. Other tubes can be discussed and I'll provide a list shortly. FWIW, I tend to do a lot of research before purchasing any gear. I have several pages of information from a variety of sources singing the praises of this pre-amp as being a genuine giant killer, often besting $4,000 units. Happy to share that information with you upon request. These are rarely on the used market and I suspect that's because most owners are ecstatic with them.
I almost sold this last year, but I just couldn't find the right sound from another tube unit. But, I'm moving decisively in another direction hoping
that I'm making the right choice. Feel free to ask questions.
I have perfect feedback on Audiogon and will share all that on request.
Can provide pics when I return home. For those who like to tube roll, this unit provides many options. There are entire threads on tube rolling with this unit.
Bill at Morningstar [EE's exclusive U.S. distributor] is extremely well versed in tubes AND he's a great asset to the audio community who
knows his stuff and stands behind his products. Excellent condition. All original factory modifications included.
Original box, manual, etc. [Maybe even the white tube glove].
Additional tubes available.
$725 Thank you. Some review excerpts. by Srajan at 6 moons--
From that perspective, the MiniMax trio will leave you wanting for nothing. To be honest, with a budget of $2,700 for amplification separates plus a digital front-end with headphone jack, comprehensive remote, HDCD and digital out; with this level of fit'n'finsh and sonics - I wouldn't know where else to go. I should add that prolonged exposure to the rarefied airs of statement-level products -- whether one likes it or not -- tends to create a certain threshold below which one's attention quickly drifts and writes off components that others less jaded, over-stimulated or expectant could happily live with forever after. Let's be clear that even being used to some $85,000+ worth of designer gear did not elicit sentiments of compromise from the company of these Eastern Electric minis. Outside of the soundstage which is truly gargantuan, aspects like dynamics and ultimate transparency are simply scaled back a bit as you'd expect. More importantly, the peach, though smaller, still tastes every bit a peach. That's the most important accomplishment of affordable anythings - to spread their compromises around in such an even-handed fashion that you don't notice them. Areas of relative compromise here involve incisiveness, rise times, noise floor and ultra-dynamic voltage swings. But the areas of tone and timbre, richness and depth, flow and involvement step out of this relativity and stand proudly on their own against far more expensive gear. This simply means that if the latter qualities are your priority, there really is no good reason to spend more. None. Should you fancy the former aspects more, you can get closer to your dreams elsewhere but chances are very good that you'll end up with less of the other qualities in turn. This should give you a good idea whether MiniMax squared to the third power is good for you or not. Today's award is for the system as a whole which clearly benefits from additive magic in how the components gel with each other. Going solo, it's the preamp that deserves an award - and we've already taken care of that in the past when we first came across it. Another happy owner wrote:
I own one. Ive ran several audio research, Audible illusions M3a's ect. this little preamp sounds as good as unit 3-4 times its price. I suggest give it a try. Unit responds Very well to rolling and because of its design, matched pairs of tubes are not needed. Its fairly quiet but not the best. I have $22,000 speakers and im not looking to upgrade the preamp at this time. Re: the ORIGINAL upgrade:
"The new upgraded MiniMax has a bigger power supply, and the Electrolitics in the output have been changed to polyproplene. There were some other internal tweeks performed which has lowered the output impedence to about 700 ohms. Also the gain has been lowered from 20db to 18db which is not a lot but it lets you use a little more of the volume control."
This quote is from Bill at Morningstar regarding the upgraded he did to all units. Mine was taken further up audio scale by Tom Tutay. The following pictures were taken very recently. I took the unit OUTSIDE in daylight so you can see everything, including the minimal dust.
She's a beaut. Update: I was asked about WHAT additional upgrades Tom did to the pre. The gain was adjusted to about 12 db from the original 18 db.
This likely involved changing resistors.
Tom's also known for making tweaks in the power supply section. All I know is the unit has works flawlessly with the modifications with a wider range in the volume knob, a lower noise floor [it was already very quiet],and a subtle improvement in sound quality. He didn't provide a parts list, I just let Tom work his magic and loved the result. Price. The original unit was $1100, plus $250 in mods.
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