"La Ruse" as the name suggest is hiding something. Its under the paint work and similar to "Illusion", its chassis is a plastic jiffy box. This time spray with Ocean Blue hammertone. Mach that with a large gold knob, looks the part. The tubes I've had for years and are Genelex Gold Lions ECC83 gold pin (similar to 12AX7) which have high gain. About time I finally put these premium tubes to work.
All resistors are 1/4W carbon. I like carbon because it appears to produce great musical flow and combined with the high gain tubes produces a big bold sound. No cost cutting with the attenuator which is my favorite Alps Blue velvet and it is on the output. With the pot on the output you are not throwing away precious raw signal by attenuating the input then trying to amplify what remains producing more noise.
Once more Russian Military paper-in-oil caps are on the output, they always sound good. There are two inputs selected by the small switch at the front. The external PS produces 12V regulated and 250VHT electronically smoothed. All hookup wire in the audio path is silver plated fine copper wire. There is no PCB. Wiring is a combination of component-2-component and point-2-point. The preamp is dead quiet. La Ruse not only looks good but sounds great and very grounded.
