Well, but it's nice when your tube preamp can drive the F4 directly, huh?
certainly yes, and that sort of preamps is - again - exactly suited to have great output swing, being constructed as that
though, majority of those, even with highish gain, are simply going nutz when seeing 2Vrms at input grid; and those are not going nutz with 2Vrms at grid are rare as hens teeth
- they (majority) are not made to have 2Vrms at input; they will sing, but having greater THD than Papa's H2 and my SissySIT combined
In that particular case, the F4 being driven 'normally' you get to hear the sound of the preamp with nothing in between it and the speakers.
F4 is made to do exactly that
However, you are ignoring the 900 lb gorilla in the room. The efficiency of the speakers.
not problem of mine; mine is to make amps/preamps/whatever in whichever fashion I like, just because I like
combining with speakers - I did my combining(s) in my spaces, same as anyone else need to do in his own
Maybe what the Macho 252 needs is a front end gain control.
not in my world; and then, no one is able to make product able to meet every possible need; that's why we have different speaks and amps (power) and preamps (gain and whatever) to combine them using brain
remember those older ARC preamps? They had both gain and volume controls.
I'm not sharing your sympathy for ARC gear; what I had to learn from them I did ( at least tried), now I don't think I have anything interesting to see in their schematics, and certainly even less interested in listening of any of those
I got a feeling that using a preamp with a 20Vrms swing does bad things to the 252 SIT. Specially when combined with even 90db/w speakers. It' an amp designed for 2Vrms sources and 96db/w speakers.
finally
and how that old ARC drek is made, taking years in account - having occasional sputter going from output wouldn't surprise me ....... just seeing overenthusiastic voltage regs while actual signal stages on verge of mediocrity ....... well, my blah sensation is lasting short and actually right away reminding me how old I am ........ decades ago started messing with xerox copies of these and building them ..... just to end up dissapointed later, when seeing and using Real McCay
using transformers for voltage gain/loss.
if anything , after decades of messing with funny parts, got to the point that all my Fetishes are matter of choice and certainly vehicles for fun.......... but I really have no special preference (anymore) for any parts
there are clever solutions and less clever ones ........ and stupid ones
I'm perfectly capable to make a mess with any sort of parts .... most expensive and least expensive, irrelevant