All of the Cabernets, and their big brother, the Grange with phono were very well regarded - the Cabernet was a 6moons product of the year winner and a very favourable review can be found on www.6moons.com (or email me for a copy)
Interestingly virtually all of the original Cabernet purchasers still own them- you cant get much higher praise than that.
Another reason I haven't built the Cabernets lately is that as computer audio has increased in sound quality, and resolution has become much more important to match the hi-rez files available now, I felt the latest 6SN7/6H8C preamps were better suited to this medium, as they could be made to be very accurate and transparent - if we're listening to studio masters don't we want to hear them exactly as they are?
The Directly Heated Triodes used in the various Cabernets, the 101D,300B,PX4,45,33,71A tubes did impart a slight "tube" sound-slightly warm, depending on the tube, the 101D very close to neutral and the 300B at the romantic "euphonic" extreme.
A customer bought a 2006 Dual Cabernet back for a service and I'd forgotten how gorgeous the Cabernets look, with it's Piano Black cabinet, chrome chassis and those round 101D tubes it must be one of the sexiest pieces of audio gear produced.
One of my new dacs needed the high gain that the Cabernet produces, so one of my latest DHT prototypes was put into service and damn if it doesn't sound excellent.
By incorporating some of the latest design ideas we've been using in the latest preamps, I feel it is more than capable of handling 24bit/192KHz and higher resolution files-indeed it compliments them very well. This pre is not an old style tube preamplifier with soft tone and rolled off frequency , it is very accurate, has low output Z for lots of drive. And with the "magic" of DHT tubes it becomes very easy to spend hours listening to music.
Please note the Cabernet is only available with 101D output tubes-the alternatives are either getting hard to find, or are too microphonic for high resolution use.
So it is back in limited production, but please bear in mind that are production is slow and meticulous, and there could be a long wait for one of these masterpieces.
