Van den Hul The Grail SE Phono Preamplifier, Pre-Owned
Very good pre owned condition. This unit is approximately 5 years old and shows only a few small marks on the top cover.
The front panel, wooden side cheeks and rear panel are clean. The marks are only noticeable under direct light and from certain viewing angles. We have deliberately photographed them under strong lighting for full transparency, so they appear more prominent in the pictures than they are in reality. In normal room conditions, the unit presents beautifully.
The unit is 100% functional. It has been fully inspected and tested in our showroom and is working perfectly on all inputs and outputs.
Included: Main unit, 2 × outboard power supplies
Offered for sale is a pre-owned Van den Hul The Grail SE, the dual-mono Special Edition of the acclaimed Grail phono stage and one of the most highly regarded solid-state phono preamplifiers of recent years.
Now discontinued, The Grail SE had a retail price of approximately €17,000, making this a rare opportunity to acquire a genuine reference-class phono stage at a substantial saving. This is not a model that appears on the pre-owned market often.
The Grail SE uses a current-mode, transimpedance MC input, a topology now also adopted by brands such as CH Precision and Sutherland. This design takes the signal directly from low-output moving-coil cartridges and provides automatic impedance matching in milliseconds. There is no manual loading to set and no loading to get wrong, as the circuit optimizes itself to the cartridge.
Unlike the standard Grail, the SE is a true dual-mono design, with two separate amplification sections and two independent outboard linear power supplies, each housed in its own aluminium chassis. RIAA equalization is implemented entirely with inductor-resistor networks, with no capacitors in the filter path. Gold conducting paths and tight-tolerance components are used throughout. Channel separation is rated at an exceptional 102 dB.
The result, in Michael Fremer’s words in Stereophile Analog Corner #297, is a quiet, neutral and transparent phono stage with effortless dynamics that gets out of the way of the music. The Absolute Sound also praised its dynamic authority and exceptionally low noise floor among solid-state designs.
Specifications:
Inputs: 3 × unbalanced RCA, 3 × balanced XLR, including one MC, one MM and one switchable MM/MC
Outputs: Unbalanced RCA and balanced XLR
Gain: 33 / 41 / 47 / 50 dB for MM, 56 / 64 / 70 / 73 dB for MC, DIP-switch selectable
Loading: 47 kΩ for MM, automatic matching approximately 40 to 400 Ω for MC
Channel separation: 102 dB
Mains: 230 V, 50/60 Hz
Dimensions, main unit: 475 × 95 × 335 mm, excluding power supplies
Condition and what is included:
Very good pre-owned condition. This unit is approximately 5 years old and shows only a few small marks on the top cover, consistent with its age.
The front panel, wooden side cheeks and rear panel are clean. The marks are only noticeable under direct light and from certain viewing angles. We have deliberately photographed them under strong lighting for full transparency, so they appear more prominent in the pictures than they are in reality. In normal room conditions, the unit presents beautifully.
The unit is 100% functional. It has been fully inspected and tested in our showroom and is working perfectly on all inputs and outputs.
Included: Main unit, 2 × outboard power supplies and 2 × umbilical cables.
