[replytoken]

A friend was nice enough to lend me a Morrison ELAD that he is not using to serve as a headphone amp. There are no instructions with the equipment, and we both believe that I have hooked it up properly. Unfortunately, there is almost no sound coming out of my Senn HD-600's, even with the gain (volume) knobs at full open (3 to 4 o'colck). Is there anybody here who has experience with this pre-amp and headphone box who might be able to offer some assistance?

 

[redyolk]

I was thinking about getting the headphone box for my currently-in-storage ELAD as well. Can you post some pictures of the ELAD w/ headphone box? I might be able to help you out.

 

[88Sound]

I have an ELAD. There are two switches on the front, one to select the source (L1 or L2) and one that will mute the ELAD (Off or Mute). Hook up your source (cd player...whatever) to L1 in the rear of the unit, set the front switch to L1. There are two pairs of rca outputs on the rear, both pairs will be active if the mute switch is set to 'Off'. You will need a headphone jack hooked up to a pair of RCA outputs.

So....Source to L1 in the rear, select L1 on the front, set mute switch to off, hook up a headphone jack to either pair of outputs. Play source, turn up left and right volume controls on front.

Make sure the power supply is turned on and hooked up correctly to the preamp with the umbilical.

If you plug in your source to the L2 jacks on the rear select L2 with the switch on the front.

If you have done all these things and are getting no volume at all then there is a problem. If you are turning the volume up to maximum and are not getting it as loud as you would like then the ELAD is OK. There are internal switches that you can check to increase the gain of the amp if they are not already at their maximum position. Although the ELAD is an excellent preamp it does not have as much gain as most dedicated headphone amps IMO.

 

[replytoken]

I apologize for not posting an update to this thread. I seem to have posted on the AudioAsylum thread, but forgot to post here. The culprit was the one thing I never would have suspected - the Sennheiser Adapter for the HD-600's. Once I replaced that, everything was fine.

As it seems that the ELAD neither adds or subtracts very much from its source signal, it has been somewhat helpful in comparing a new CDP that I recently purchased against my existing player. It seems to drive the Senn's pretty well, as I do not go above 12 o'clock on the gain (volume) switches.

Listening to the ELAD as a headphone amp raises some interesting questions. If you are into purity, the ELAD seems to be the thing. What you play is what you get, only amplified - something that many look for in a preamp. While I appreciate this school of thought, and know that we often pay big $ to get equipment to do this, it can be a bit anit-climatic depending on your source and music material. Great material played well sounds great. Poor or marginal recordings can be a different story. Makes me stop and think what I really want before I purchase equipment.

 

[MeDotOrg]

It's very interesting reading the debate in various forums about the ELAD. In a way it's like the children's story of 'The 'Emperor has no clothes', except the point of this story is that the Emperor shouldn't be wearing clothes. In this case the 'clothes' are the sound coloration added by the pre-amp.  
 
Everyone wants to believe that what they want is uncolored sound. But the reality is that, depending on the source material, coloration can sound better to some ears. To stretch the analogy, sometimes we want to use a little Photoshop on the Emperor. I've had an ELAD for about 10 years. It's a great pre-amp, but it is not what you would call forgiving. Lately I've been thinking about a tube pre-amp to warm things up a bit. 
 
Is this sacrilege? Or am I like the woman who took lamaze classes who is screaming for an effing  epidural?