Leak Stereo 20

[Wakefield Turntables]

I fancy treating myself to a valve amp and have decided to try the Leak out. Can anyone recommend a decent pre-amp match for it? It'll form part of a seconf system mainly for Jazz and prog rock. TT will be a garrard 301 and speakers will be an old pair of Celestion Ditton 15XR's. I intend to full rewire the speakers at some stage.

[Jonboy]

These amps are a bit on the sensative side so a passive pre works well with them, you could make your own with an Alps pot and a few phono sockets very cheaply

[Wakefield Turntables]

Mant thanks for your reply. I'm new to Valves, my main hobbying is tweaking and restoring TT's. I'll see if I can find a decent passive pre-amp.

[Thermionic]

I have used a Leak Stereo 20 for years and agree with Jon about the use of a passive as the amplifier is sensitive. Probably too sensitive to work with most preamps without some form of line attenuation.

It has a high input impedance so you will need to keep the attenuator or passive switch box near to the amp with short interconnects to avoid HF attenuation. When I rebuilt my amp I wired a couple of 20K Ohm trimmers across the input so I could use almost anything to drive it.

At the moment I use the Leak or a Quad 303 with a pair of LS3/as and an Audio Reasearch LS7 line stage and Trichord Dino phono amp.

The Leak is very nice for acoustic music such as chamber Jazz, but I am not sure about prog rock. I don’t think it had been invented when Harold designed is amp, Tommy Steele perhaps.:eyebrows:

[Dave Hewitt]

Hi,if I remember correctly a 1megohm resistor in series with input creates a potential divider with the 1 meg connected to ground and makes the amp half as sensitive.Hope this helps.
Dave.

[hifi_dave]

Croft pre-amps work really well with Leak. Sold hundreds over the years to go with Leak.

[DSJR]

Croft preamps go well with EVERYTHING :lol: :cool:

[Jonboy]

Croft preamps go well with EVERYTHING :lol: :cool:


So do Audio Notes ;):cool:

[Analog Addict]

My Stereo 20 works well with an old Quad 33 that I rescued from the scrap heap. Not sure if the Leak has had any modifications as I've not yet had the need to delve inside. It had however, been upgraded through Classique before I bought it.