I received the following question this morning so I thought I would share the answer as my first blog post.

Q. Hi Todd, Thanks for letting me know about the release of the Little Country III, So far I’ve been hearing good things about it. How does it compare with the Little Country 2 ? What are the main differences?
Dave

A. Hi Dave,

It’s nice to hear from you, thanks for your inquiry.

As you know, prior to the LC3 the Little Country 2 was the flagship product of the Firestone Audio lineup. It combined a hi-end tube headphone amp and preamp in an attractive package that sounded great. Reviewers and owners alike raved about the Little Country 2 and with good reason, the sound quality was outstanding and it was a great value.

But the Little Country 2 was not without its gremlins. The dreadful S type “power transfer cable” would come loose and cause a myriad of problems; this was compounded by the power switch being located right beside it on the back panel. The stock Electro Harmonix tubes were “bass fat” and muddy, (admittedly the tube thing was an easy fix). There was also the internal gain switch that turned a 5 second task into a five minute one. The LC2 also had some issues with “current rush” to the tubes at startup and had little protection for headphones and speakers.

So what has Firestone Audio done to address these issues?

First of all, the Little Country was off the market for over a year. The Firestone engineers performed a complete and major redesign and addressed all of the issues above and more!

1. The Power Supply unit is now in a separate module and connects to the main unit with a high grade cable with threaded connectors. No more S type cable. Yeah!

2. They’ve added a brand new power regulation module that has a built in “soft start” circuit to protect the tubes and also added speaker and headphone protection circuits. This new Power regulation module is also responsible for a high degree of power conditioning which adds tremendously to the sound quality.

3. The tubes have been changed to 2 x 6922. The 6922’s remain pretty much the defacto standard for preamps. Yes the LC3 still comes standard with Electro Harmonix tubes but I enjoyed listening to it for over two months with the EH tubes and only recently switched to Telefunken. The point is the 6922EH are not horrible but there is room for improvement here in my opinion and there are loads of different 6922 and derivatives to choose from on the NOS market.

4. The LC3 now has an external gain switch as it should.

These are some of the more notable changes and upgrades. All in all I would say that Firestone has done an outstanding job of improving on what was an already excellent product and I highly recommend the LC3 to anyone looking for a hi-end tube headphone amp. And it costs less now too!

Find out more on the new LC3 headphone amp / preamp by visiting the Little Country III page.

We welcome your questions, comments and feedback