Here's one for you "source first" fanatics. $10K plus in front end (actually 12K plus, but who's counting), and less than $200 for the rest of the system. In addition: turntable azimuth was not set, anti-skating was not set, tracking weight was "kind of" set, damping fluid was not installed, vacuum pump was not on, three sets of adapters and "interconnects" (I use the term loosely) were used between the table and the receiver, and the MM phono stage was fed by a cartridge with a low output (.18 mv I think).
I'll be darned if it didn't sound good anyway. Lots of focus, detail and punch!
I'm sure you would have been really impressed had we been able to hook up my Realistic Minimus integrated (3 watts per channel) instead of the Sansui receiver. Unfortunately, the speaker outs on the Realistic were rca jacks, and the speakers came equipped with bare wire terminations. Next time I will try to make sure that there are a couple of extra rca jacks around - I'm sure that Realistic will still kick some ass being just over 30 years old and all...
JKane - Yes, I remeber the Kracos with the tweeter cone in the middle that you had to glue back on once in a while :) If we'd had a pair of those we would have tried them.
Larryi - I am crushed to learn that I have been outdone, though I will ask for an official enquiry - after all most of the equipment in that "other" system were well matched, and I'm quite sure that the interconnect from source to preamp was less than 20 feet long, and in one piece, not in three like my system. They just aren't trying hard enough over there...
