Welcome to my little piece of heaven that affords me great pleasure. The sound is ethereal with a natural, warm, sweet, listenable quality that makes listening to strings, vocals, etc. a joy. Fast and solid bass, not muddied. Soundstage is unbelievable with an almost in your living room quality. On acoustic guitar it is as if they are "there." The essence of round sound.
VTL TL 2.5 Preamp without phono stage. Mullard 12AU7 & 12AT7 tubes with Herbie's Tube Dampers. Nice Preamp with pure sound but the folks at VTL are really worthless when it comes to after sales service
VTL MB-250
A dedicated Triode Tube amplifier. Powered by eight Svetlana 6550 tubes, NOS Sylvania 6350 & AT7 Black Gate tubes. All with Herbie's Ultra Sonic Tube Dampers. Totally rebuilt (but for original power transformers) by Vacuum Tube Valley, all wire wound resistors replaced and all capacitors replaced, electrolytics replaced with Black Gate Caps, plastic tube sockets replaced with ceramic/gold sockets, new trimpots. Very natural sound with good sound staging, very extended in the highs, pure magic in the midrange, and warm but fast and responsive bass. Too bad VTL is so non responsive in their customer service.
VPI Industries Aries
VPI Aires I - state-of-the-art performance at a real-world price. It has a a vanishingly low noise floor with no obvious colorations delivering an almost ghostly background silence.
VPI Industries JMW
JMW 10 - Nothing overly special but nice. Wide and deep soundstage with air and separation between the instruments.
Dynavector Karat 17D3
Neutral, fast, focused and detailed, with great extension at both ends. Fabulous tight bass.
Walker Audio Precision Motor Controller
Great Controller! Set the speed and it stays at selected speed forever. Transients are improved, better clarity and amazingly better blackness.
Walker Audio Valid Points
Valid Points Resonance Control System to go with Walker Precision Motor Controller
Jolida JD9A with Underwood Level 3 Mods
Very nice phono stage competing with more expensive units. The unt has a very liquid midrange and more neutral presentation across the sound spectrum. Blacks are black and the equipment gets out of the way and lets the music shine.
VPI 16.5
Vinyl record cleaning machine
MSB Technology PAD-1
just purchased so no comment as of yet
Sony CDP CX455
Multistorage CD changer. What can I say, I am lazy. When I really want to liten to the music, I go to the analog components.
Benchmark Media Systems DAC1
Nice DAC
Klipsch Klipschorn
You either love them or hate them. I love them. Anyone who believes these speakers sound "flat, dull or tinny" have never heard them appropriately staged and matched with a tube amp. Properly staged and matched, the K-Horns deliver impressive soundstage depth and imaging with dynamic reality and emotionally involving sound.
Audio Metallurgy GA-2
varying lengths for all components
Synergistic Research Resolution Reference 6'-x2 series
Wonderful Power cords - Used on preamp and monoblocks
Black Mountain Peak (Silver)
Used for Turntable, Phono stage, DAC, ADC, and CD Player
I'm not certain about anyone else's experience with VTL after sale service. I know a couple of "former dealers" for VTL that told me they stopped selling VTL products because they were so non-responsive to dealer support inquiries. When I had problems Bea and Luke were not very responsive. The MBs were sent back to VTL on 3 different occasions due to the B+ fuse in one of them constantly blowing. Supposedly, they looked at everything, brought the MBs up to spec and returned them. EVERY time the fuse continued to blow. I gave up on VTL rectifying the problem because the units were not under warranty and the continual expense shipping them back and forth to VTL was getting expensive in and of itself. Instead, I hired Vacuum Tube Valley to fix the problem (this is another story altogether). After replacing ALL of the capacitors, except the 2 large oil can caps and all of the wire wound resistors, cleaning the PC Board and re-doing the fuse holder, the MBs sound really nice and the fuse no longer blows. Of course, Vacuum Tube Valley had an excruciating ordeal getting any help from Luke or Bea at VTL. It took 2 months and innumerable telephone calls just to get a schematic to work on the unit.
