My Aesthetix Rhea was delivered earlier this afternoon. Weighing in at 40 pounds, it is massive. It even dwarfs my preamp. It's a full size component and takes up an entire shelf.
Here are some pics...
It has a compliment of 10 tubes, 5 for each channel of this dual mono design.
Look at how tiny the Ray Samuels Audio F-117 Nighthawk is compared to the Rhea. Talk about David and Goliath.
And here is the Rhea in my rack.
A lot of thought went into the design of this product. I have seen a lot of expensive components pay a great deal of attention to the business end of the design while glossing over user interface and appearance. This is one slick looking product, and the user interface is fantastic. If you want to change gain or loading simply press the corresponding button on the front panel, and then press the left side of the display glass to increase the setting and right side to decrease it. The Rhea has both balanced and unbalanced outputs and can accommodate up to three tonearms.
I'm sure most of you want to know how it sounds. In a word, outstanding. But then again so did the RSA F-117 Nighthawk and it sells for $3,900 less than a brand new Aesthetix Rhea.
Still, I don't want to sell the Rhea short. While my experience with it amounts to just a few hours it has the tube warmth I was after and combines that with great speed, detail, and dynamics. It is also very quiet for a tube phono preamp, almost as quiet as the RSA F-117 which runs on a Lithium Ion battery.
So far I am very pleased with the Rhea. It will be interesting to see what I can do with a little tube rolling. It has a nice compliment of tubes right now, with a matched quad of NOS RCA 12AX7 in the first gain stage, a pair of Mullard 12AX7 tubes in the second gain stage, and a pair of Electro Harmonix 12AX7s in the third gain stage. I will probably swap out the Russian tubes for some NOS Amperex, Sylvania, or Siemens tubes and fit the output stage with a pair of Amperex Bugle Boy 6DJ8 tubes. But I have to say that the sonics are just fine with the compliment of tubes that are in it, though I might find something to nit pick about later.
I would have never ponied up the $4,695 that this piece commands brand new, but at the $2,475 I paid for it I think it was a great deal.